


sing me awake (with a song about pirates)

by Origamidragons



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Character Study, Drabble Collection, Gen, Headcanon, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 175
Words: 61,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25799371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons
Summary: A collection of drabbles about some pirates, written in response to character+word prompts.
Comments: 405
Kudos: 172





	1. robin + waves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from the amazing devil's song not yet/love run (reprise)

Before the Pirate King died, his words echoed around the world. He said, _find my treasure_. He said, _I left it all there_. Those are the ones everyone remembers; the words that shaped a world, an era, a second king.

But the Pirate King also said, _there are things that cannot be stopped._ He said, _the ebb and flow of the ages._

Those are the words that Robin remembers. 

The nighttime waves lap at the Sunny’s hull, the currents pushing and pulling, a constant fight between the ceaseless forces of the deep. Even on the stillest night, the ship is always moving, endlessly borne along by those currents they can’t see, that they will never fully understand, that always threaten to swallow them whole. 

Robin leans against the railing and looks out at the dark ocean and the gentle rise and fall of the waves, and thinks of things that cannot be stopped. 

They only have their little boat, sturdy and stubborn and sunlight as she is, to hold them afloat above the dark water, to carry them safely across the endless oceans and through the ebb and flow of time. Robin smiles, soft and fond, and strokes a hand along the rail. 

She almost drowned in those waters once, thrown adrift from the burning shores of Ohara and left to claw helplessly against the currents of hatred, of propaganda, of _untruth._ They’d tugged at her legs and wrapped around her ankles, pulling her down, down, down as the waves closed over her head and filled her eyes with saltwater.

These days, every breath she draws is sweet with freedom. 

The tides of history cannot be stopped but now she has a ship to sail them, a navigator to show the way and a captain to lead her to the dawn, and that is all she could ever ask for. 

The waves will still be here, long after they are history.


	2. franky + memories

Sometimes Franky remembers his hands. 

It’s not that there was anything special about them, really. They’d been thick with callouses since childhood, blisters formed and popped and reformed as the daily work wore his palms to leather. Workman’s hands. 

The pinky finger on his right hand was always a little crooked, ever since he broke it when he was fifteen and stupid and challenged a drunken pirate twice his size to an arm-wrestling match and the man put his hand clean through the dirty table. Kokoro had patched him up, hadn’t quite set it perfect- Water Seven hadn’t had a hospital, in those days. 

There was the index finger on his left hand, too- it was a little shorter than the right and the nail mangled into pieces, from when he’d caught it on a bandsaw when he was nineteen. He hadn’t realized how bad the injury was at first; Iceberg had cursed him out half-hysterically when he saw, and it was one of the only times Tom-san ever shouted at him. 

There was always engine grease under his nails, stuck stubborn as paint, never worth cleaning out when there was always going to be more tomorrow. There’d always been splinters, too, from worn-out dock boards and fractured masts and hull beams, and he’d had a scar at the base of one of his thumbs when a particularly bad one had gotten infected. He doesn’t remember which hand that was, anymore. 

The hands he’s got now are fine. Better, even. Precise down to the nanometer, capable of detail or brute force work in equal measure. And he never loses at arm-wrestling anymore. 

But his new hands don’t have any memories in them, either.


	3. shirahoshi + light

Shirahoshi remembers her mother as light.

She’s never seen the sun, of course, but she’s heard of it, of its beauty and glory. In stories, in songs, the sun is always gold and orange and yellow and white, warm and life-bringing and _good_. 

And so she remembers her mother, her warm smile and flashing golden scales and infinite goodness, and thinks that she’s what the sun must be like. 

If the sun is even half as warm and bright as her mother always was, it must be the most beautiful thing there is. 

It’s those thoughts and those memories that keep her warm, through the cold years and lonely nights. She repeats the stories, of sunset and sunrise, and when they echo off the walls of her tower she feels a little less empty. 

When she sleeps, she dreams of her mother, and of the sun, and sometimes she can’t tell the difference between them. The intermittent rattling impact of steel against stone can’t reach her and wake her, not then. Her mother keeps her safe. 

When the gondola breaks through the cloud layer into unfiltered sunlight, for a moment it’s too bright to see, so bright it hurts, and Shirahoshi wants to close her eyes, wants to cry, wants to hide. 

She doesn't. She's been trying to be braver. She thinks maybe Luffy would be proud.

She looks up, and sees the sun. 

She was right, she thinks, and tears roll down her cheeks but she can't stop smiling. She was right.

It’s just like her mother’s smile.


	4. luffy + mine

Pirates take. 

That’s one of the first lessons Luffy learns, when Shanks and his crew sail into port with all their wonderful stories and rough laughter and eyes full of freedom. Pirates take what they want, what they like, and fight tooth and nail to do it. 

They like the town, so they stay; they like the bar, so they drink; they like Luffy, so they take him in and feed his dreams on stories of the open sea. And when the bandits come and threaten what they’ve claimed as theirs, they show no mercy. 

And Luffy watches, with a boot on his chest and tears in his eyes and dust in his mouth, and never, ever forgets.

Pirates take what they want and make it theirs; pirates are selfish and hungry and never let go of what they love once they’ve got it, and Monkey D. Luffy is a pirate down to his bones. 

So Luffy takes.

He meets two boys who are all bruises and broken teeth and fury and decides he likes them, and as soon as he does the world shifts a little on its axis because they’re _his_ now, fact immutable as the tides, and he would (will) change the world for them. 

He takes a swordsman from his execution and a navigator from her slavemaster, takes a cook from his self-imposed prison and an archeologist from the ruins of her past. He takes them all, all these damaged people with dreams too big for their hearts, and makes them _his_ , because he’s a pirate and he takes what he wants.

There are bigger crews, stronger and richer crews, with wider influence or more allies, but there are none _better_ than Luffy’s crew, because they’re his, and they always will be.


	5. franky + hair

“Oi, Franky, have you s- _what the FUCK are you DOING!_?”

Franky startled at the sudden shout, his hand jerking involuntarily and snapping the scissors shut. A clump of blue hair fell to the floorboards and he cursed under his breath, squinting to inspect the damage in the dirty mirror. 

“Great going, Ice-brain, you made me fuck it up!”

Iceberg snorted, stepping the rest of the way into the small bathroom and giving Franky’s hair a critical look. “It looks like you were already doing fine with that on your own. _What_ possessed you to try and cut your own hair?”

Franky scowled up at him, but answered anyways. “I just wanted to try and give myself a mohawk, okay? I asked Kokoro to do it, but she said no.”

“So you decided to do it _yourself,_ ” Iceberg said, sounding somewhere between dismayed and unsurprised. “With _safety scissors._ ”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Franky objected hotly. “…Is it?” 

“It’s pretty bad,” Iceberg said, ruffling a hand through the unevenly cropped mess with a frown. “Might be easiest to just buzz it, honestly.”

“What? I’d look like an _idiot_ with a buzzcut-”

“You look like an idiot all the time,” Iceberg countered without missing a beat before sighing and grabbing the scissors out of Franky’s hand. “Give me those. Sit still.”

“Huh?” Franky blinked, starting to turn around.

“I _just_ said _stay still_ ,” Iceberg said tersely, planting a hand on top of his head to hold it in place. A moment later, he heard the soft snipping sound of the scissors again, more clumps and tufts of hair falling away as Iceberg worked to even out the hack job he’d done on his own head. 

“Oh,” Franky said, and then after a moment, reluctantly, “…Thanks.” 

He could see Iceberg roll his eyes in the reflection of the filthy mirror. “Just _ask_ next time,” he said. “Idiot.”


	6. chopper + promises

“You need to stop getting yourself _hurt_ ,” Chopper half-wails as he pulls the last stitch tight. The gash had taken seven, all told- a bad injury, on most people, but barely worth mentioning to Roronoa Zoro, a fact which makes Chopper want to _scream._

He ties the stitch off before tilting his head back to glare up at Zoro with his best mix of anger and disappointment. Zoro shifts a little, uncomfortable, and looks away. Chopper has had a lot of opportunities lately to polish his guilt trip looks. They get more effective every day. He wishes he didn’t have to use them so often.

“Scar tissue has weaknesses, you know! It’s not as flexible as normal skin, it tears more easily and if you don’t get enough nutrients it can just start to fall apart! And there are long-term health effects from severe repeated blood loss! You could give yourself anemia, Zoro!”

“It’s not like I go out _looking_ to get myself hurt,” Zoro says, a little defensively, which might be the single most scaldingly false thing Chopper has ever been told. 

Chopper scowls up at him, then hops down off his lap, shifts into Heavy Point so he’s looking down at Zoro rather than the other way around, and sandwiches Zoro’s face between his hands to force him to look at him. 

“Zoro. _Promise_ me you’ll be more careful.” 

Zoro doesn’t answer immediately, his eye sliding off to the side. Chopper shakes him a little. “Zoro.”

“Fine! Fine, I promise I’ll be careful!” Zoro surrenders, and he’s laughing a little, and Chopper can finally relax. 

“You better!”


	7. luffy + love

“I don’t get it,” Luffy declared one morning, apropos of nothing. 

Robin glanced up from her book, giving her captain a mildly curious look. Luffy had his arms crossed behind his head, lying on his back on the deck and staring up at the sky with an intent look on his face. “Get what, captain?” 

“Marriage,” Luffy said. “I was thinkin’ about it cause of Sanji’s wedding. I don’t get the point.” 

“Hmm,” Robin hummed for a moment, marking her page and closing her book. “Well, most weddings are rather different from Sanji’s, but generally, they’re a celebration of romantic love and a declaration that you intend to spend the rest of your life with someone.”

“That’s the part I don’t get,” Luffy said. “Why just one person?” He frowned. “You can’t have a crew with just two people.” 

“Married people are still allowed to have other friends, Luffy,” Robin said, amused. “For example- oh, Kin’emon-san is married to Otsuru-san, but he also has the other Red Scabbards as comrades.”

“Then what’s the difference?” Luffy asked, pushing himself up on his elbows. “I mean, I want to spend all the rest of my life with you guys, too.”

He said it with such simple confidence that Robin couldn’t help but smile, so painfully fond all at once that her chest ached. “It’s a different type of love,” she said, “but love all the same. So perhaps you’re right.”

Luffy rocked up on his heels and looked over at her. “Yeah?” 

Robin laughed, blossomed a pair of arms from the deck, one to steal his hat and the other to ruffle his hair. “Yes. Perhaps there’s no difference at all.”


	8. law + honesty

Law was a liar. 

(He learned from the best.)

He lied about the crimes he committed, before he had a good enough handle on his Devil Fruit to evade pursuers and handle fights with ease. He lied about his birthplace, if it ever came up- he was from Swallow, Spider Miles, any North Blue island he could think of so long as it wasn’t Flevance.

He lied about his name. Lied every time he promised he wouldn’t hurt someone. 

He lied about-

( _I’ll be right back, Lami._ )

-everything. 

But he was always honest with his crew. 

Which was what made this so hard.

“To _Zou?_ ” Bepo repeated, voice high with shock and far too loud. 

“Yeah,” Law said. “You can still find your way back there, right? Take the crew there and take refuge while I deal with this. It should only be a couple months.”

Bepo was wringing his paws together, claws clacking against each other. “But- captain, if you’re aiming to take down _Doflamingo_ \- we can _help_ , we can-“

“I can handle it on my own,” Law said _(lied),_ cutting him off in a tone flat enough to leave no room for argument and gritting his teeth against the way Bepo flinched. “It’ll be easier that way.”

“But-“

“ _Captain’s orders_ ,” Law said, dropping the words like lead weights.

Bepo fidgeted, visibly unhappy, but nodded, jerky and hesitant. “Captain…” he said slowly, “…just. You’re coming back to get us when you’re done, right?” 

“Yeah,” Law said ( _lied_ ). “Of course.” 


	9. ace + home

“Careful with those, Luffy,” Ace said, absently readjusting his grip on the stack of boards he had balanced on one shoulder. Ahead of him, Luffy was wobbling a little under the weight of the other end of the bundle of planks, shoulders trembling.

“I told you, I can do it!” Luffy said insistently, twisting around to look over his shoulder at Ace rather than the path ahead. 

Ace saw the root in Luffy’s path and managed to yell “ _Luffy-!_ ” just a heartbeat before Luffy’s sandal caught on the half-hidden obstacle, sending him tumbling forward and taking both the planks and Ace with him. 

Ace hit the dirt path face-first, biting his tongue and tasting blood and dirt, planks hitting his head and shoulders and back. There were gonna be bruises tomorrow, though that was nothing new; he’d always worn his endless blotchy purple-yellow welts as battle scars.

He shoved a few boards out of the way to push himself up onto his knees, scowling. “ _Luffy-_ ”

Luffy just laughed, bright and clear as sunshine, as he picked himself up none the worse for wear. Lucky little shit. “Sorry, sorry!” 

Ace was just about to kick his ass a little when he heard another laugh, snorting and familiar, and he and Luffy both wheeled around to see Sabo walking up to them, grinning with shameless amusement. 

“Was wondering what was taking you guys so long,” he said, kicking one of the fallen boards. “Figures.”

Ace scowled. “It was Luffy’s fault!” he said, pointing accusingly at their younger brother. 

Luffy ignored him completely. “Hey, hey, Sabo, how’s it coming?” 

Sabo grinned back at him. “I got the first couple floorboards in place! It’ll be a lot easier to do the rest now.”

“Yes!” Luffy cheered, throwing his hands up and nearly tripping over another one of the planks. “We’re gonna have a _treehouse!_ ”

And Ace was still a little angry with him, maybe, but Luffy’s enthusiasm had always been infectious, and he couldn’t help but grin, trading a fond look with Sabo before reaching over to scrub a rough hand through Luffy’s hair.

“C’mon,” he said. “Maybe if we hurry getting the rest of the boards in, we can sleep up there tonight, yeah?”

“Yeah!”

A treehouse. A place of their own, with no Dadan or Gramps or anybody to tell them what to do or who to be. 

Ace had never had a home, not really, but he liked the thought of this one. 


	10. kiku + sunshine

The sky is cloudless when Kiku steps outside to sweep off the porch of Otsuru’s teahouse. 

It’s an hour past sunrise, and Okobore Town has no greenery to block the sky. Even past the ever-present foul smoke pluming up from the factories, the morning sun is clear and bright, soaking the ground with golden warmth.

She’s never seen a darker morning. 

She’s certain it would look glorious to an outsider, but it’s impossible for her to savor this morning sun, to so much as feel it on her skin, not when it’s still hours to the dawn. Not when tragedy still hangs over Wano like a funeral veil, not when the pretender still sits the throne of the Flower Capital. 

Oden-jō burned at midnight, and the smoke of the conflagration rose to choke the sky, and the sun has not shined on Wano since, no matter how bright the mornings may be. 

She bites her lip hard to pull herself back to the present, bends to sweep the dusty boards. The dust motes catch in the sunlight, glittering and gold, and it’s so convincingly real, but she _knows._

Were the sunlight true, it would warm her skin.

Ever since waking up in this twisted future, she’s felt nothing but cold, a sting down to her bones that lingers like snow. She’s certain Kin and the others must feel it too, the creeping chill of the dead of night. 

Oden-jō is nothing but ashes, now, the fire long since burned to nothing, and yet the smoke still lingers invisibly, a pall across the sky. She’s certain it won’t clear in truth until the Kozuki clan is restored. 

_Soon_ , she thinks, and there’s a pulse of excitement in her chest. 

She can’t wait to feel the warmth of dawn again.


	11. praline + bubbles

Praline hadn’t wanted to get married on land. 

Of course, what the Charlotte children _wanted_ very rarely mattered. The only desires that had ever mattered were Mama’s, and those were of paramount importance. They left no room for the petty preferences or dreams of her sons and daughters. Praline knew that, had always known that. 

And yet. Maybe, ever since she was a little girl, she’d daydreamed about an underwater wedding. Of decorations of pearls and seashells, of sunlight made soft and blue and ever-changing by the ocean’s surface above, of her wedding dress floating around her, the hem tugged this way and that by the currents. She’d always been happiest safe below the waves. _Away from Mama,_ and then she carefully didn’t examine that thought any further. 

Mama had shot the idea down before Praline was even done cautiously voicing it. Of course she had. If the wedding was underwater, then Mama couldn’t go, and if Mama couldn’t _go_ , then Mama couldn’t eat _cake_ , and Praline was never foolish enough to be _surprised_ that her mother loved her sweets more than her daughters, but the reminder hurt nonetheless.

So instead she was here, at this stiff, generic affair, with a lovely fluffy wedding cake and a lovely boring dress and the same lovely decorations that they’d trotted out for Chiffon’s wedding scarcely two months before. She snatched another flute of champagne from a passing server and downed it in one gulp in a futile attempt to dull the aching disappointment in her chest. The bubbles danced on her tongue. How many was that, now? She’d lost track, but she was starting to feel more than a little floaty. 

Her new husband was sat beside her, silent. She’d barely exchanged words with him, aside from the vows. He looked about as uncomfortable as she felt, with his tail twisted up beneath him. The chairs weren’t made for merfolk, of course. She’d probably pity him, if she wasn’t so busy pitying herself.

“Hey,” she said, and when he didn’t respond- _fuck,_ what was his name- Ad... Al... _Aladine,_ right, “Hey- Aladine. Do you wanna know a secret?” 

He glanced over at her. “A secret?” 

She giggled, and leaned over, and whispered, perhaps too loudly, “ _I don’t want to be here._ ”

He made a face at that that she couldn’t quite place, and the crewmate sitting on his other side did, too. She realized a moment too late that that might have sounded like an insult, and scrambled to correct. “Oh, not you! You’re fine,” she promised with a sleepy, sharp-toothed grin, swatting playfully at his arm. “You’re lovely. Barely know you, but you’re lovely. I just don’t want to be-“ she made a messy, sweeping gesture at the ballroom all around them- “ _here._ ” 

She sighed, melancholy all at once, propping her chin in a hand and staring moodily at her now-empty champagne flute. “...I really wanted an underwater wedding,” she admitted, half to herself. “Seashells in my hair, pearls on my dress... it would’ve been... really nice.” 

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting her new husband to say. Probably nothing- if she was honest with herself, she’d half forgotten he was there. 

She certainly wasn’t expecting for him to say, “Oh- we can do that.” 

She paused and looked back at him, blankly uncomprehending for a moment. He flushed _(cute)_ and ducked his head a little bit at the attention, rubbing the back of his neck _(cute)_. “I mean- ah, I don’t know if you know, but a captain of a crew can officiate marriages,” he said, a little uncertainly. 

“So... if that’s what you’d like, we can have an underwater ceremony. Any kind you want. I’m sure Jinbe would be happy to help. I know you didn’t- ask for this, probably, neither did I, but- I want you to be happy,” he said, growing steadily redder the longer he spoke. 

Praline stared at him a moment longer, chest full of bubbles that had nothing to do with the champagne, and then grinned. She shifted out of her seat to wrap herself around him and his chair instead, flopping her tail over his lap and propping her head on his shoulder. 

“I love you,” she told him very seriously, and meant it. “I’m keeping you.”


	12. usopp + falling

It all happens very fast, when it happens. 

The scene is this: Usopp is balanced on the stern rail of the Sunny, loosing projectiles left and right to fend off the marine ambush that had jumped them without warning. Franky finally readies the Coup de Burst and yells out a warning to hold on tight that Usopp doesn’t hear, drowned out by the sound of marine cannonballs thundering into the water all around them. The engines fire to life; the ship rockets out from under him. 

And Usopp is _falling_. 

He can see his crewmates’ faces in the suspended moment where he hangs in the air, time sharpened to a crawl by the rush of sudden terror and adrenaline in his veins. Zoro glancing over his shoulder, eyes widening; Nami’s mouth opening to call his name; Jinbe already rushing to the railing to jump in after him. 

And then there’s a hand, stretching like a lifeline from the back of the ship as it takes off, outstretched and waiting. 

In that heartbeat split-second Usopp looks at it, and remembers- sharp rocks digging into his knees, head bowed low, sobbing so hard he couldn’t see and begging for forgiveness in a voice so thick with tears he could barely speak, and that _hand-_

He was stupid, back then, to think they ever would have left him behind. 

He slaps his hand into Luffy’s the barest moment before he hits the water and holds on for dear life, sea-spray kissing his face, and the stretched-out lifeline of Luffy’s arm recoils and yanks him back (because it always, always does). 

He’s _flying,_ for a moment, towed behind the ship as it catapults away from the pitched battle, heart beating high into his throat and grin too wide for his face, and Luffy really has rubbed off on him, hasn’t he? 

And then he’s crashing into the deck, into Luffy, and Luffy’s laughing and so is he, breathless and blurry from adrenaline. He’s still holding tight to Luffy’s hand, and his legs feel so wobbly he’s not sure he could stand if he wanted to, but he was never really scared. 

Of course his captain would never let him fall.


	13. crocus + memories

Crocus doesn’t go to Roger’s execution. No point, in his opinion. Roger’d lived a hell of a life in the time he’d had, and that’s what Crocus intends to remember. No point in tainting all the happy memories with the miserable ending. 

He grieves. Of course he does. But that’s nothing new, really. He’s been coming to terms with Roger’s death ever since he first pressed a stethoscope to his captain’s chest and heard him breathe. 

If he let himself linger on every patient he’s ever lost, every friend who’s never returned (where did they _go-_ ), he’d bury himself in memories. So he tries not to dwell, and most of the time he succeeds. 

And then one day, a year or two or three after Roger’s execution, a ship rockets over Reverse Mountain. A small, sturdy little thing, with a dragon figurehead sloppily painted red, and Crocus knows before it even hits the water whose it is. 

He carefully quashes his grin before striding out of his lighthouse as the ship sails up to the cape, weighing anchor at the docks. “Oi! Is that you, cabin boy?”

Shanks is at the rail, older now but still so young, still crowned with that old hat he’s always prized so much, and his face crumples in indignation immediately. “Hey! It’s _captain_ now, old man!”

Crocus snorts. “Please. There’s only one man I’ll ever call captain and it’s sure as hell not _you_ ,” he says. There’s another young man at Shanks’s side, giving Crocus a watchful look- first mate, he’s guessing, he’s got that look about him. Crocus turns to him and adds, “Once you see a boy condemned to scrub the whole ship for mouthing off to the captain’s missus, he’s a cabin boy for life.” 

“ _Hey!_ ”

Another crewmate leans around Shanks and his first mate, grinning wide. “Hey, mister, d’you have a lot of embarrassing stories about the captain?” 

“So many,” Crocus promises. “You should hear the one about the time he and the other brat accidentally stole some admiral’s goat.” 

“We gave it _back! Crocus-_ “ 

Shanks still whines exactly like he did when he was thirteen and trying to weasel out of medical treatment, and Crocus has to turn away to hide his grin, waving a hand over his shoulder. 

“Come in for some tea, won’t you? I’ll tell you all about it.” 

For the first time in awhile, he’s looking forward to reliving old memories.


	14. sanji + regal

Sanji used to cower. 

It was safer, easier, amidst the high stone walls of the Germa Kingdom, to make himself as small as possible, head ducked and shoulders hunched. It was survival. The smaller he was, the more likely he was to go unnoticed, unhurt. 

It always made Reiju frown, in that not-quite-comprehending way of hers. “You should hold your head higher,” she’d say, tipping his chin up. “You’re just as tall as them, you know.” 

_If I do that, they’ll just punch me down again_ , he didn’t say, because Reiju loved him but she never really understood. He just ducked his head, staring at the floor as she looped bandages around his bleeding forehead. He saw her frown soften out of the corner of her eye. 

“You’re still a prince, you know,” she said, gentle. “You should have pride in yourself.” A pause, and then- “That’s what Mother would want.” 

Despite her encouragement, he could never hold himself like a prince, not while the stone walls and steel bars and his father’s stare pushed down on him, boxing him in, making him small. The iron mask only made it worse, pulling his head relentlessly down with its weight, making his neck and shoulders ache. 

No, he never managed to hold his head high as a Vinsmoke. 

But as a _cook_ \- 

“A cook’s greatest pride,” Zeff told him when the restaurant first opened, back when he was still nine and skittish and half-starved, “is the look of satisfaction on the face of a customer taking the first bite of a delicious meal!” 

So Sanji learned to watch, and every time a customer took that first bite of food and _smiled_ , he could stand a little taller, and hold his head a little higher. 

He was never really royal, but by the time he was nineteen, he could hold himself with pride worthy of a king’s cook. 


	15. shanks + dreams

“What about you?” Makino asked, voice soft and questioning in the late-night quiet of her bar.

Shanks tipped his head, curious. “What do you mean?” 

There was a newspaper resting between them on the varnished, well-weathered wood of the bar, the boy who wasn’t quite their son grinning up at them from the front page. Makino glanced down at it, smiling fondly for a moment.

“I was just wondering,” she said, tapping an idle finger against the newspaper. “Luffy has his dream, to chase out there on the ocean. What’s yours? What are you looking for?” 

“Oh,” Shanks said, and then he started laughing, and didn’t stop for a good minute or so. 

Makino raised an eyebrow, but he could see a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “What’s so funny?” 

Shanks grinned at her, wide and shameless. “Easy,” he said. “My dream’s only ever been a ship for my home and a crew for my family and maybe someone pretty in my bed-“ he winked at her, and she snorted and swatted at him with the newspaper- “and the endless ocean ahead.”

“Pirates are creatures of dreams,” he said, and gestured around them at the bar, at his crew dozing at the tables, at the ship moored just outside at harbor, at her. “I’m just lucky enough to get to live mine every day.” 

She smiled, propped her chin up on her hand. “And is it a good life?” 

He grinned, and said honestly, “The best.”


	16. robin + flood

Robin sat in the shadows of a rooftop, her hair and clothes caked with blood and sand, and watched the rain return to Alabasta. The heavy grey storm clouds blanketed the sky, sheltering the city from the relentless desert sunlight for the first time in years. 

The first drops kissed her hands, her legs, the crown of her head. She shrugged her long white coat off- beyond salvaging, now- and tossed it aside. The rain was cool on her skin, and she couldn’t help but savor it. 

The rainfall came down harder and harder, from a shower to a downfall to a flood, and cleaned the sand from her hair, the blood from her skin. Water ran through the long-parched streets below, rain barrels overflowing as all the pent-up fury of the heavens was unleashed in one fell swoop. 

The sand and blood and anger would wash away in the flood, and Alabasta would be renewed to live again. 

If only it could be the same for her. 

There was a woman in the street below, kneeling in two inches of floodwater, hands clasped in front of her chest, whispering holy words and rocking back and forth as tears ran down her cheeks. Not far away was a man in a rebel uniform, sitting in the new-made mud, staring blankly up at the sky as the raindrops splattered against his face. 

Robin felt an ugly, unfamiliar knot of guilt in her stomach, and looked away. 

Something as simple as this rainfall, blessed as it was to the country’s inhabitants, would never be enough to make her clean, to wash away her past along with the muck and blood. It would’ve been nice to just die in those catacombs, absolve herself of sin and responsibility alike, and go to see her mother.

But she hadn’t. 

What now? 

She was so _tired_ , and the weight of Ohara’s legacy was so very heavy on her shoulders. There was something hurting deep in her chest, and it had nothing to do with the still-throbbing stab wound above her heart; it was an ache of exhaustion, a bone-deep weariness. 

And yet- there was a voice in the back of her head, whispering that she had to stand, to move, to live, and it sounded too much like Saul and too much like her mother and most of all like the pirate who’d dragged her alive and screaming from the ruins of her last chance. 

His fault. His responsibility. 

Yes, she’d pick herself up. She had a boat to catch, after all. 

But. She tipped back her head to look up at the sky, let the raindrops run down her cheeks and wash away the tears. 

She’d wait until the rain was done.


	17. bellemere + orange

“No, seriously, watch this,” Bellemere insisted, bouncing the orange in her hand and eyeing her target carefully. 

“I don’t want any part in this,” Smoker said, stubbornly not watching. “You’re going to make him fall, _again_ , and he’s going to crack his head open and probably die. Ma’am.” 

“No, see, I’m telling you, it’s _scary_ , watch!” Bellemere said, and waited impatiently until Smoker reluctantly looked up to let her improvised projectile fly towards her target, currently standing in the food line with his back to her. 

A hand snapped up and caught it without so much as looking around. 

“ _See!_ ” Bellemere said, whipping back around to point emphatically at Smoker. “See! I told you!” 

Smoker was squinting. “I saw him trip on completely flat linoleum two days ago,” he said, a little disbelievingly. 

“ _Exactly_ ,” Bellemere said, and opened her mouth to say something else, but didn’t get any further because something small and round collided directly with the base of her skull, nearly sending her face-first into her food. 

She whipped around. “Hey, fuck you, Roci!” 

“Turnabout’s fair play,” Rocinante said, wandering up to their table with a tray full of food and a raised eyebrow. “You started it. What kind of example are you setting for your trainee?” he asked, gesturing towards Smoker, who looked somewhere between amused and baffled. 

“Not the same! I knew you’d catch it,” Bellemere objected, but wordlessly moved over to make room for him on the bench nonetheless. “I was just giving Smoker here a quick lesson.” 

“Yeah?” Rocinante asked, banging a knee on the edge of the table as he sat down. “What lesson?”

“Don’t fuck with spies,” Bellemere said sagely, finding the fallen orange on the ground with her foot and bouncing it up to her hand. “Hey, think this is still good to eat?” 

“Just because you _can_ eat something doesn’t mean you _should_ ,” Rocinante said. 

Bellemere shrugged, and started to peel it anyways. 

“Not too late to request a transfer, you know,” Rocinante told Smoker. Bellemere punched him none-too-gently in the arm for the suggestion without looking up. Her free hand was busy sectioning the peeled orange into thirds, and once done she passed one to Smoker and the second to Rocinante. 

“Thanks, sir,” Smoker said after a moment, popping a slightly squashed orange slice into his mouth. “But I think I’m good.” 


	18. iceburg + duty

The problem, he thought, staring down at the blueprints and methodically destroying the end of a pencil with his teeth, was always going to be the weight. Water Seven was almost entirely stone, and mostly marble and granite at that. And what wasn’t stone was steel, which was even heavier. 

He groaned, pressed his hand to his eyes like that could ward off the headache throbbing in the front of his brain, then glared down at the in-progress schematics again. 

The door to his office opened. He didn’t look up. For a visitor to be let in so easily, it must have been one of his most trusted workers- his employees, and the city at large, had been very protective of him ever since the Cipher Pol incident. “Yes?” he said idly, readjusting the blueprint on his desk as though looking at it from a different angle would magically solve the load-bearing conundrum he was faced with. 

Something light and rattling knocked against his head, bouncing to the desk and rolling slightly until coming to a halt against his hand. He stared down at it for a moment. It looked like a pill bottle. 

He looked up. Paulie was leaning against his office doorframe, looking more than a little exasperated. “Painkillers, boss,” he said. “Take two and crash. Wake up feeling like a new man.” 

Iceburg blinked. “What?” Blinked again. “I’m fine.” 

Paulie gave him perhaps the most blankly disbelieving look he had ever seen. “All due respect, boss,” he said, “you were shot six times _and_ you haven’t been sleeping. Get some fucking rest.”

“...I’ve got things to do,” Iceburg said. “The city-”

“Christ,” Paulie said. “I forgot what you were like when you’re not pretending to be an airhead.” 

He ducked into the room, scooped the armful of blueprints off the desk before Iceburg could stop him, and rolled them up with professional neatness. As soon as they were gone and he didn’t have anything to look at, Iceburg became aware of how heavy his eyelids were, and he couldn’t quite fight off a yawn.

Paulie patted him on the shoulder. “Get some sleep, boss,” he said. “City will still be here tomorrow.”


	19. izou + family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers!!

She’s so _young_.

It’s stuck in Izou’s head, repeating every time he looks at her. It shouldn’t be so jarring. She’s always been his little sister, ever since he learned she _was_ his little _sister_. And she’s still his little sister. That hasn’t changed. 

But… he’d thought, idly and occasionally over the years, of visiting home, leaving his new family just for a time to see his old. And whenever he had, he’d imagined her, growing up just the same as he was. 

And she _has_ grown up, into a fine samurai and a fine young woman- but not as much as he’d thought. And it shouldn’t bother him, but it does. 

She looks so _happy_ , dancing at the heart of the feast. He’s lingering at the edge of the party, simply watching the festivities, drinking in the sight of a people free at last. 

Someone settles against the wall beside him. He glances over, startles, and immediately moves to kneel. “Lady Hiyori!”

“None of that,” she says with a frown, grabbing his shoulder and tugging until he straightens up again. “This is a party!”

When last he saw her, she was still just an infant, when Lord Oden and his family left Whitebeard’s ship for Roger’s. 

She’s grown up to look so very much like her mother.

She smiles slightly at him, looking a little sad, before glancing back out at the riotous feast. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” she says, and he follows her gaze to Lord Momonosuke, seated close to the bonfire at the center of the party and chatting with the little purple-haired girl who’d attached herself to Ace’s little brother. “So much time gone.” 

“It is,” he agrees, and it comes out as a sigh. He doesn’t regret the choices he’s made, not really- knows he’d make them again in a heartbeat even knowing how it all would end. He wouldn’t trade all those wonderful years with the Whitebeards for anything. 

But somewhere there’s a world where the both of them stayed in Wano, and he got to watch her grow up, and never had to come home twenty years older to find a fresh and incomprehensible gulf between them, and maybe he mourns for that, just a little. 

“But,” Lady Hiyori says, something hopeful in her voice, “He’s still my big brother. And we’ve still got so much time left.” 

Kiku is laughing, bright as bells above the tumult of the party, and Izou smiles. “Yes,” he agrees. “We do.” 


	20. hachi + admiration

“I talked to Nami,” Jinbe said, and there was nothing accusatory in his voice, but Hachi flinched anyways. 

“Oh,” he said, and stared down at the floor, folding and unfolding different sets of hands in a vain attempt to distract himself. Jinbe sighed, and didn’t say anything else, while Hachi worked on finding the words that all of a sudden felt so stuck in his throat that he couldn’t breathe.

“She doesn’t hate us,” Hachi said at last, quietly. The words felt too fragile, too impossible, like they’d fracture if spoken loudly. 

“No,” Jinbe said, and it came out heavy and tired. “She doesn’t.” 

“I don’t,” Hachi started, had to stop and swallow. “I don’t _get_ it,” he finished, half-desperate even to his own ears. “It was so easy to stay so _mad_ about the captain’s death- for so _long_ \- and she just…” 

He trailed off, staring down at the ground. “…he killed her _mom_ , Jinbe,” he said, miserable. “And we all just… let him. Arlong said it was _fair_.” 

Jinbe was quiet for a long moment. “One of the reasons I always thought he couldn’t have gone too far,” he said, “was because none of you ever came home,” and it still wasn’t an accusation, but it had hurt less when Hachi was _shot_. 

Jinbe shook his head. “I always underestimated that about him. He was so good at getting people to listen to him. To look up to him. You, Kuroobi… Hody. And hatred leads to hatred.” 

“…The captain would’ve been disappointed in us,” Hachi said. 

“Maybe,” Jinbe agreed. “But not for being angry.” 

(They used to try and see who could make Koala laugh the most, once she started really laughing. Hachi thought of Nami sobbing in her room and then smiling, teary-eyed and frozen, whenever anyone looked in, and felt abruptly sick.)

“No,” he said. “Not for that.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “He would’ve liked Nami, though, I think.” 

“He would’ve,” Jinbe agreed. “I think he would’ve admired her.” 

“I do,” Hachi said. 

Jinbe smiled, big and honest. “Me too.” 


	21. conis + belief

When Conis was eleven, the sky filled with lightning, and for eight years thereafter her faith was built on fear.

At home, the lights were all out, casualties of the power surge that had swallowed the island. Her father knelt down and put his hands on her shoulders and explained, gently, that from then on they were going to have to be very careful with what they said and thought and did, because they had a God now. 

He told her that this was not a god like the one who had ruled them before but a God, and the word had a weight like lead when it fell from his mouth. 

Gods, he told her, were not to be angered.

She hadn’t understood, but the thing both cruel and kind about belief is that it doesn’t require understanding; only acceptance. 

So she had accepted. 

There was little else she could do, in those early days when thunderbolts shook down from the sky like raindrops and smote all doubters and dissidents where they stood. It became easier and easier as the years wore on, until it was merely a fact, immutable as gravity. God was invincible, and God knew all, and all who angered God died. 

And then God had fallen, and Skypeia was shattered and freed all at once, and everything that Conis had ever known to be true was all at once not. 

She had had faith, and routine, and an understanding of her small world and its rules. Perhaps it hadn’t been good, but she’d carved out a space for herself. 

She’d lived by the rules and now the rules were gone, and where did that leave her?

“Free,” Raki said at once, when Conis asked, the two of them sat beneath a tree on what had so recently been sacred ground. She smiled up at the sky, blue and cloudless and safe at last. “To live as we wish without fear. To look forward to the future.” 

And… maybe that was something Conis could believe in, too.


	22. whitebeard + family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers in this chapter!

Whitebeard’s hands could pull the sky apart. 

They were massive, rough with age and battlescars and thick with calluses, strong enough to break through walls, through mountains, through the earth itself. A single strike from one of those hands had sunk battleships, felled castles. 

They had never held a newborn before. 

“Be careful, please, Captain,” Toki said. “Be sure to support his head.” She was radiant, even ragged and exhausted from childbirth. There was no anxiety in her voice as she passed her firstborn son into his hands, nothing but trust, and he couldn’t help but marvel at it.

(Oden might have been foolishly, recklessly brave, but it would always be Toki’s courage- the courage of someone who understood the dangers fully and faced them unflinching anyways- that he admired most.)

Toki and Oden’s son fit easily into one of his hands, and he carefully shifted his thumb to pillow his head, like Toki had told him. The baby was so small, so _fragile_ , red-faced and so new his eyes hadn’t even opened yet. 

“His name is Momonosuke,” Toki said, her voice warm and fond. “Oden’s very eager to show him off to the crew, but we wanted to tell you first.” 

“Good name,” Whitebeard agreed, because he couldn’t seem to say much else around the sudden and mysterious lump in his throat. “Strong. Maybe he’ll grow up to be a pirate.” 

Toki laughed. “He’ll grow up to be shogun of Wano, someday,” she corrected him gently. “But no matter what he does, I think he’ll always have a great many pirates as family, don’t you?” 

“Any kid born on a pirate ship is bound to have a little pirate in him,” Whitebeard argued back, but without any heat. “Just watch. I bet he’ll turn the world upside down.” 

“Oh, I’m counting on it,” Toki said, with that clever, knowing smile of hers. 

Whitebeard grinned down at the infant sleeping in his hand, feeling all at once impossibly fond. “I’d expect nothing less,” he said, “from a grandson of mine.”


	23. rayleigh + underwater

Luffy sinks like a rock, and Rayleigh grits his teeth against the breath already fighting to escape from his lungs and arrows himself deeper into the dark water. 

He should have taken a deeper breath before jumping in; he usually does, and it probably says something that he’s had to develop a _routine_ for fishing drowning apprentices out of the ocean. But he hadn’t noticed right away, this time, and maybe he’d panicked a little when he’d realized all at once Luffy wasn’t there and there was water all around, and he’d jumped. 

He’d always been the strongest swimmer on board the Oro Jackson. Not that any of them were slumps (though Roger had gotten worse near the end, as his sickness ate away at his lungs). They’d all taken their turns diving after Buggy whenever the little idiot went overboard.

Shanks had handled it most often, if only because it was usually his fault. Rayleigh couldn’t even count the number of times the rest of the crew had only found out about an unplanned swim because both their cabin boys had suddenly popped up dripping all over the floorboards, Shanks grinning wide and Buggy screaming at him as soon as he had the breath to do so. 

But most of the time, when it wasn’t Shanks, when they didn’t notice right away and needed someone who could dive fast and deep to make up for lost time, it was Rayleigh. 

Point being, he’s had plenty of practice with this. 

He closes one hand around red fabric, wastes a few precious seconds kicking a few feet deeper to grab the slowly sinking straw hat with his other. 

(They’d both be pissed if he let it get lost.)

(Idiots, both of them. So goddamn sentimental. But he’s the one risking his life just to fish a hat out of the ocean, so maybe he can’t talk.)

The ocean’s surface glitters above them, and Rayleigh slings Luffy’s dead weight over his shoulder and kicks up, up, up towards it, fighting against the burning in his chest.

It’s so familiar he can almost imagine that when he surfaces he’ll see the Oro Jackson, his crewmates leaning over the rail waiting, Crocus grumbling, Shanks worrying and trying to pretend he isn’t. He can hear Roger, laughing, like always.

His head breaks the surface, and it’s silent.

He sucks in a couple deep breaths to clear his head, then swims for shore. He’s just dragging the both of them back up onto the beach when Luffy coughs himself awake, spitting up water, gasping and wheezing, and with that sound the world comes alive again. 

Rayleigh sighs, settles back onto the wet sand, and drops the sodden hat onto Luffy’s face. 

That way, the kid can’t see him smiling.


	24. brook + hope

There’s no color, in the Florian Triangle. The mist, grasping and ever-present as it is, seeps into everything, permeates the air itself, turns even the brightest hues dull and muted. 

And over time, wood rots, and paint flakes, and fabric decays, and everything fades to grey and brown. Thriller Bark is much the same, so haunted and dark and sunless, monotonous even despite its carnival of horrors. The mist rots everything, sooner or later, and it eats the color first. 

So, for Brook, hope is red and gold, the brightest thing he’s seen in decades, so vivid and vibrant and _alive_ that even the mist can’t hope to dim it, accompanied by a sunbeam smile and an easy invitation that nearly shatters him on the spot. 

(Brook hasn’t seen the sun in so very long, but that’s the moment he remembers what it’s like.)

It’s such a dangerous thing, is hope, because once he’s got it back again, he can’t stop thinking- about promises unfulfilled and a chance, a _hope_ , at long last, to see them to the end; about the sun. He leaves, tips his hat and makes his exit, but he was always going to come back. There’s something about Luffy, he thinks, that digs down and finds your buried and abandoned hopes and dreams and makes you _want_. 

He knows he’s not the only one. All the other crewmembers look at their captain in just the same way, like he’s the brightest thing they’ve ever seen, like he put the stars in their eyes. It’s how Brook knows he’s in good company. 

And being parted from them so soon after he’s found them _hurts_ , but it’s not nearly as bad as the first time he lost everything, because he’s a Strawhat Pirate now, which means this time around he’s stupid and reckless and brave enough to have _hope_.


	25. ace + token

_token (noun): a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality, feeling, etc._

Two days before he turns seventeen, Ace buys a hat. It’s orange, mostly because it can’t be yellow and it can’t be black and the selection in Foosha’s tiny shop isn’t great once you eliminate those two colors, but he likes it anyways. 

The hatmaker has a little collection of decorative badges on the counter when he approaches the register, and he considers them for a moment before settling on one with an exaggerated frown. After all, he hates the world and _(almost)_ everyone in it, and it hates him right back, and he’s setting out to make that everybody else’s problem. May as well wear it as a badge of honor. 

He taps on the glass, points. “Hey, I’ll take that too.” 

The girl behind the register tips her head to see what he’s looking at, then nods. “Sure. You want the matching one, too?” 

“The matching-?” 

She points, and he sees the other badge beside it, the same design but inverted, this one with a grin so wide it fills almost half the button. 

The resemblance is immediate, to a smile that’s the best and brightest thing in Ace’s whole life, and he’s nodding before he can really think about it. “Yeah. I’ll take that one, too.” 

(The next day, the day before he turns seventeen, Ace gets a tattoo, and has to tell the artist twice that yes, he really does want it the way he’s written it down.)

(And then, at last, he’s ready to go.)


	26. kaya + bandages

The first time Usopp actually comes inside her house, it’s because he falls out of the tree. He throws his arms too wide while telling her a truly fantastic story about an island in a bubble under the sea and overbalances, tipping off the branch with a yelp. 

He catches himself, but only after a moment of desperate fumbling and scraping at the rough bark, Kaya watching with her mouth half-open and fingers so tight around the windowsill her knuckles go white until he manages to close a hand around the branch again. 

He drags himself back up onto the branch, arms shaking a little with the strain, and only takes a moment to catch his breath before beaming at Kaya, wide and reassuring, like he didn’t just almost fall nearly fifteen feet. “Sorry, where was I?” 

She barely hears him, focusing instead on where he’s holding his right hand a little awkwardly, cradled close to his chest. “Are you hurt?” 

He looks genuinely startled before laughing, and it sounds just on the edge of real. “What? Me? Of course not! You think a mighty-“ 

“Show me your hand,” she interrupts with all the authority she can muster, and he meekly does so. As soon as he holds it out she has to bite back a gasp; his whole palm is scraped, fingertips to wrist, and just beginning to bleed. 

From there the snap decision is immediate. “Come inside,” she says, stepping to one side so he can climb in through the open window. 

He doesn’t move, blinking at her for a moment. “I’m not supposed to go in your house.” 

“Who cares? You’re _bleeding_! Come on, I have bandages in the bathroom. Nobody’ll know.” 

He hesitates a moment longer, then nods, climbs off the branch and through her windowsill, and all at once he’s inside her house for the very first time. It feels almost jarring, seeing him there against the expensive curtains, muddy workman’s boots on the soft white carpeting. 

He looks more than a little uncomfortable, glancing around her room like one of the butlers is about to burst from behind a door and shout at him for trespassing, and the contrast is so clear against his usual confident demeanor that it makes her feel a little sick. She smiles as reassuringly as she can, the knot in her throat loosening when he relaxes a little in response, and gently takes his wrist and tugs him over to the bathroom.

She sits him on the edge of the bathtub and has him wait while she rummages through the cabinets for bandages, cotton swabs, disinfectant. 

“You don’t have to do this,” he says after a moment, shifting in his seat. “It’ll heal on its own, it’s really fine, I’ve had way worse-“ 

She finds what she needs, kneels down next to him and carefully starts to wipe the blood away, cleaning the dirt and bits of bark out of the scrapes. “Of course I don’t have to. I want to,” she says, glancing up to frown at him. 

_I want to be able to do something for you for once. Please._

He glances away, rubs the back of his neck with his uninjured hand, smiles a little awkwardly. “Right.” 

She finishes cleaning the scrapes, starts to wrap the clean white bandages around his fingers. 

“You’re really good at this,” Usopp says after a comfortable moment of quiet. 

She smiles down at his hand. “Thank you.” 

“Hey, maybe you’ll be a doctor or something someday! Maybe when I set out to sea- again, I mean- you can come with, and you can patch me up after all my grand adventures,” he suggests, grinning.

“I’d rather you not get hurt in the first place,” she says, trying for scolding but falling a mile short because she can’t help but giggle at the idea. He’s always so good at making her laugh.

He waves his free hand. “Details. Can’t you just imagine it, though?” 

He weaves a story out of thin air, sitting there on the edge of the tub as she bandages him up, telling her all about the theoretical adventures of the brave Captain Usopp and his kindhearted ship’s doctor, and she laughs and laughs and laughs. 

And, unnoticed, the seed of a dream takes hold in her heart. 


	27. merry + trust

Merry wasn’t a Grand Line shipwright and never would be- he was barely a shipwright at all. He was a hobbyist at best, had only ever built and patched little boats for gentle waters. He had never built a pirate ship before; barely knew where to start. 

But he owed a debt, for his safety and the town’s and for Miss Kaya’s very life, and he would try his hardest to pay it. 

“I’m trusting you, alright?” he told the almost-finished figurehead as he ran sandpaper across the rough wood, smoothing out the sharp lines into a rounded head, outlines drawn where big eyes and a smile would be once he started with the paint. 

“Miss Kaya cares very much about those pirates. Usopp, that long-nosed boy, in particular. She’d be distraught if something happened to them, and just between the two of us, so would I. So look after them, will you? Keep them safe.” 

He sighed, patted a wooden horn. “I know it’s quite a lot to ask. You’re hardly a battleship, eh? And the Grand Line is a terrifying place, I’ve heard. But Miss Kaya and I are counting on you.” 

He took a step back, wiped the sweat from his brow, looked the nearly-finished ship up and down. It could never be mistaken for a battleship, true, but there was something sturdy about the little boat nonetheless, like it would weather the worst of storms. 

He smiled up at the figurehead, and the penciled-on face smiled back. 

“You’ll do wonderfully,” he told it, and set to work once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt specified merry the person but i decided to be emotional about merry the boat anyways


	28. kiku + sharp

The unsheathed blade gleamed, threateningly sharp. Kiku glanced up, uncertain, one hand clutched tight around the hilt. “What if I cut myself?” 

“Then we bandage it up and try again,” Denjirou said patiently. “A samurai needs to be able to maintain his own weapon, and you want to be a samurai, don’t you?” 

Lord Yasuie’s words echoed unspoken between them, an oft-repeated mantra between their cohort as they trained and studied and fought to become what their liege needed them to be, and she nodded firmly. “I do!” 

“I’m not sure about this,” Izou said from his position near the door, eyeing the sword. “Can’t you start her on something a little less-“ 

Lord Oden slapped him on the shoulder as he passed, driving the breath out of him with a soft _oof_. “It’ll be fine! How old is she, like ten? That’s plenty old enough to handle a sword! When I was that age, I’d already been banned from all the gambling dens in the capitol!” 

Izou watched him leave, then said, “I changed my mind. There are so many more dangerous things she could be doing. This is fine.” 

Denjirou laughed under his breath as Izou left, then turned back to Kiku, who was still holding the sword, waiting for instruction. “You start by cleaning the blade with the wiping cloth,” he said. “Start from the bottom and move towards the tip.” 

Kiku nodded, took a breath, and ran the cloth from the base of the sword to the point in one clean swipe. The blade was nearly as long as both her arms, and she had to stretch to reach. 

“Perfect!” Denjirou said, ruffling her hair. “Now turn it over- careful- and do the other side.” 

She tried to rotate the blade one-handed, but it was heavy, pulling on her arm like a lead weight after what already felt like far too long holding it steady. She set the cloth aside to support the blade with her other hand, and-

-her hand _slipped_ -

The razor-sharp tip of the blade dragged a thin red line of pain across her fingers, stunning her into motionlessness as Denjirou cursed, reaching over her shoulder to grab the fumbled sword before it could land on her legs and cut far worse. 

She only stared at the blood welling up from the paper-thin cuts, pain pulsing through her hand. It was so _sharp_. It had cut before she could even think to stop it, before she could even notice her own fumble. 

So that was a samurai’s sword. 

Denjirou was moving to stand. “Let me go find some water and bandages-“ 

“I want to try again,” she cut him off, eyes fixed on the sword. 

He paused. “Are you sure?” 

_A samurai needs to be able to maintain his own weapon. You want to be a samurai, don’t you?_

She was going to have to become so much stronger. So much sharper. Nothing less would do, from a samurai sworn to the future shougun of Wano. Her hand throbbed softly to the beat of her heart, blood dripping to the tatami. 

“I am,” she said, and took the sword, and began again. 


	29. koala + trust

“You don’t trust me, do you?” Koala’s new partner asked casually. 

Koala smashed a guard’s head into the wall, then glared over at him. “Is this _really_ the time for that?” 

“It’s the perfect time,” Sabo insisted, ducking neatly under a punch and then spinning around to catch another marine in the skull with his pipe with a satisfying crack. “This would be a lot easier if you trusted me to watch your back.” 

“I can handle myself.” 

“I’m not saying you can’t!” Sabo said. “I’m just saying it would be _easier._ ” 

She rolled her eyes, punching the last marine in the gut and sending him to the floor before turning to face Sabo, arms folded. “Is that why you leave _your_ back open _constantly_?” 

He blinked, looking momentarily confused. “I do?” 

“All the time,” she said. “One of these days you’re gonna get stabbed.” 

“Well, that’s the thing,” he said with a grin, after a moment that dragged just a little too long. “I won’t, cause I’ve got you.” 

“You don’t know that,” Koala argued. “You don’t even know _me_.” 

He shrugged, slinging his pipe back over his shoulder and starting to rifle through the file cabinets for the ship movement logs they were looking for. “Call it a hunch,” he said, and Koala stared at his back, wordless for a moment. 

The thing was- she was done with trust. 

(She’d trusted the man with the shady eyes and the too-wide grin when he’d promised her he had so many wonderful toys to show her if she’d just come with him back to his ship. She’d trusted her mother, when she’d said ‘no, sweetheart, I didn’t hear any gunshots.’) 

(Trust hurt.)

And Sabo was one of the most untrustworthy people she’d ever met, all bright eyes and sharp smiles and lying as easily as he breathed to get them into wherever they needed to go, and she shouldn’t have liked him at _all_ , but she did.

It was annoying. 

“Ha!” Sabo said, finally pulling a file free and flipping it open to quickly scan through it. “Found it.” 

“Does it have what we need?” 

“Looks like it,” he said, flipping through a few pages before snapping it shut, tucking it under one arm, and glancing around at her. 

His intact eye widened. 

“Koala, _duck_!”

She obeyed without even thinking about it, dropping to the floor as the steel pipe cut through the air where she’d been standing just a moment before and caught the marine who’d managed to pick himself up behind her cleanly in the neck. He toppled backward, eyes rolling back, and a knife clattered to the floor. 

For a moment they just stood there, catching their breath, watching the prone marine to make sure he was down for good this time. 

“…Thanks,” Koala said after a moment. 

Sabo grinned at her. “What are friends for?” he asked, and he didn’t _say_ ‘I told you so’ but it sure felt like it, so she punched him in the arm as hard as she could. He just laughed it off, the asshole. 

Maybe she could trust him. Just a little. 


	30. robin + belief

When Robin was very small, she believed that the world was good.

She believed that there was a rightness in the world, even if it never seemed to find its way to her. She spent her every free moment reading, tucked away in the corners of the great library, and in those stories, even if there was hurting and injustice, good always triumphed over evil in the end. 

When she was eight, Ohara burned around her, and she learned that there was no rightness in the world, and there were no happy endings. 

There were only people, and more often than not people were cruel, or greedy, or ignorant, or all of the above, and they lied and sold and hurt, and there was no one and nothing she could believe in except herself. 

It wasn’t much of a life, but it was more than her mother had and more than Professor Clover had and more than Saul had, dead and ashes all, so she bowed her head and soldiered on, through every betrayal and every narrow escape and every wound that never quite healed, until, until, _until-_

When Robin was eight, her faith died with the ashes of Ohara, and when she was twenty-eight, a burning flag brought it blazing back to life. 

Life wasn’t a storybook and it never would be, not for her. She’d lost too much and hurt too often to believe in goodness or fairness or justice anymore. 

But she could believe in her crew. 

And maybe that meant she could believe in happy endings again, too.


	31. makino + distance

Makino had never been a wanderer. 

Some might have thought that strange, for a woman whose family, imperfect and informal though it was, contained so many of them, but it had always made perfect sense to her. 

After all, everyone needed someone to come back home to. 

The furthest she ever traveled was every other Sunday, when she packed a picnic basket and a bottle of the most acrid sake she had and the newspaper, hitched up her skirts, and hiked up Mount Colubo. 

(There had been a time when there was no newspaper, because there was no news of faraway sons to wait for, and instead she brought a half-full laundry basket to compel one and then three and then two little boys into helping her with the washing, and wouldn’t you know it but she had space for their mud-stained clothes too-)

(But that was long ago and far away, now.)

She shifted the picnic basket to her other arm to rap on the rough-hewn door. She only needed to knock once before it was yanked open. A large hand snatched the bottle from her grip immediately, popping the cork loose with a thumb and tilting it back to chug directly from the mouth.

Makino only smiled. “Were you waiting for me, Dadan-san?” 

Dadan finished her drink and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “As if,” she said with a rather unconvincing roll of her eyes, turning on her heel and striding back into her hideout. Makino followed her in without needing to be invited, closing the door gently behind her. 

As soon as she stepped inside, a few of the bandits sprawled around the hideout perked up, focusing on the folded paper tucked under her arm. 

“Ma-chan! Is there news?” someone called eagerly.

Makino was sure the light in her chest showed in her eyes when she said, “There is!” 

A chorus of enthusiastic hollers met her announcement. Dadan dropped down to sit down at the low table, Makino kneeling down at her side, and the rest of the bandits quickly clustered around them, leaning close to see the paper as Makino smoothed it out on the table. 

The title was written in bold black typeface, a pronouncement to the world: **STRAWHAT PIRATES LEVEL ENIES LOBBY! DECLARE WAR ON WORLD GOVERNMENT!** Beneath the title was a row of photos (and one bad sketch), most of the faces unfamiliar but one wearing a hat and a smile that none of them could ever fail to recognize. 

There was a chorus of cheers, and someone asked, “Are there posters? We have to hang them up-“ 

Makino obligingly shook the paper out, letting the sheaf of wanted posters tucked inside the centerfold fall to the table, and a fresh round of cheers arose. 

Amidst the excited chaos, Dadan sighed and settled back on her heels, taking another swig of sake. “Told those stupid kids once there wasn’t anything they could do against the whole world,” she said, sounding at once gruff and fonder than she’d ever admit. “Figures that one would take it as a fuckin’ challenge.” 

“I’m proud of him too,” Makino agreed with a smile. 

“Oi, who said anything about _proud_ -“ Dadan objected immediately, but without any real heat, as Makino pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle her laughter. 

No, It didn’t bother her that her family was so far away. All it took was one look at Luffy’s smile, bright and beaming even against the grainy wanted-poster paper, to tell her he was doing just fine. 


	32. doflamingo + dynasty

Every king needs an heir. 

For what’s the _point_ of a dynasty if it doesn’t continue after death, the foundation of a legacy written in the blood and ink of the world, a legend persevering even after its founder has passed away? 

A man only dies when he’s forgotten, and one way or another, Donquixote Doflamingo _does not intend to die_. 

Ideally, the issue of an heir will prove redundant. But should true immortality prove to evade his reach, should the fruit he’s searching for never surface, well. It’s always good to have a backup plan, to ensure his dynasty survives. 

His successor doesn’t need to be his own blood- and, in fact, better not. His blood family has proven _disappointing_ , in the past, untrustworthy and foolish, too weak for his needs. He isn’t willing to gamble everything on an unborn child that may not even be able to meet his demands. 

But Law, on the other hand. 

Law is cruel and clever and hateful and stubborn and furious and so _perfectly_ malleable, the ideal heir to his legacy, and Doflamingo takes a liking to him immediately. So long as Law’s illness can be cured, even if Doflamingo does someday die, his reign will never end. 

He has Law, and he has the Ope-Ope fruit just within his reach, and for a glittering moment he almost has his eternal dynasty. 

(Corazon steals both from him in one fell swoop, the most devastating thing he possibly could have done, and Doflamingo _hates_.)

(He pulls the trigger, but they both know who won.)


	33. dragon + past

“ _I_ think,” Ivankov said, “you should get drunk.” 

“We’ve established I don’t care about your opinions when it comes to my personal wellbeing, Iva,” Dragon said without looking away from the chart laid out on the table. The boat rocked and swayed around them, driving as hard as it could through the storm. 

“I’m just saying,” she said, leaning against the wall and folding gloved arms with a flourish. “If I were you-“ 

“Which, luckily for all of us, you’re not-“ 

“If I _were_ ,” she repeated relentlessly, “I know I would want to drink until I couldn’t see straight after a conversation like that with _my_ father.” 

Dragon glared down harder at the paper. “Are we going full speed?” he asked- demanded, really- in favor of answering. 

“You know we are,” Iva said, and then, when he didn’t respond further, “We’re really just going to not talk about this?” 

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Dragon said in a voice flat and cold enough to discourage most other people from further conversation on the spot, but unfortunately Iva wasn’t most people, and had never been easily perturbed. 

“You and I both know that’s not true,” she said. “You never told me your father was a marine officer.” 

“It was never relevant.” 

“Sometimes friends talk about irrelevant things, believe it or not,” Iva said. 

Dragon finally turned away from the map, turning to look out the porthole at the stormy ocean. The winds were gusting as hard as he dared risk, all the better to ferry the ship to its destination as soon as possible. No telling yet whether it would be enough. 

“…He should have told me sooner,” he finally said. “I should have known sooner. We could have acted faster. Organized a proper evacuation.” 

“No use thinking like that,” Iva scolded, crossing the room to stand at his side. “We’ve always operated on whatever information we have and done whatever we can. It’s never bothered you like this before. What about this island is so important?” 

She tapped the chart laid out on the table. “Dragon. What’s so special about Dawn Island?” 

There were so many answers he could have given. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and meant it. “All that matters is that we get there in time.” 


	34. shirahoshi + courage

“I didn’t- actually get off to the best start with the Strawhats, to be honest,” Vivi admitted, smiling a little sheepishly. 

“Really?” Shirahoshi asked curiously, shifting a little to re-situate herself so she could participate in the conversation. She was half-curled up, Vivi and Rebecca sitting inside the curve of her tail to grant some measure of privacy to their conversation. “Why?” 

“Well… I was actually undercover, at the time,” Vivi explained, lowering her voice a little. “I was trying to find out who was responsible for the civil war in Alabasta and how to stop them, and that meant infiltrating Baroque Works. Which was a bounty hunting organization.” 

Shirahoshi tipped her head. “Bounty hunting…?” 

“Bounty hunters are people who try to hunt pirates to get paid by the marines for turning them in,” Vivi explained. “So, um… we tried to catch the Strawhats.” 

“Oh,” Rebecca said, and then started giggling. “How did that go?” 

“Not well!” Vivi said candidly. “Zoro demolished our entire base just on his own. We never even stood a chance. I was… really lucky they decided to help me out and let me join their crew even after that,” she said, her grin turning softer. 

“I’ve got a story like that too, actually!” Rebecca said. “I met Lucy because he entered the gladiator tournament I was participating in. I knew he was a strong fighter, so I tried to knock him out so I wouldn’t have to face him in the ring.” 

Vivi raised her eyebrows. “And how did _that_ go?”

“Oh, he didn’t even stop eating,” Rebecca said, grinning. 

Vivi laughed, bright and clear. “That sounds like him.”

“What about you, Shirahoshi-chan?” Rebecca asked, tilting her head back. “How did you meet Lucy?” 

“Oh…” Shirahoshi said, flushing a little at suddenly being the subject of attention. “I don’t, um, have an exciting story like you two do. He just broke into my room, called me a crybaby, and ate my dinner.” 

Vivi made a choking half-laugh sound. “He- actually, you know what? That doesn’t surprise me at all.” 

Shirahoshi smiled, ducking her head. “But, um, after that… he brought me on a walk with him. To see my mother’s grave. It was, um, my first time outside in ten years.”

Rebecca blinked up at her. “Your first…?” 

“Because there was a man trying to kill me,” Shirahoshi explained. “Ever since I was little. So I couldn’t go out. I was always scared. He would have killed me as soon as I went outside. But because Luffy-sama went with me… then I could finally go and start living again.” She smiled, soft and fond. “That’s why I’m here, too. I think I’ll always be grateful to him.” 

Rebecca was quiet for a moment, then said, “…You know, you’re very brave, Shirahoshi-chan.” 

“Ah?” Shirahoshi stammered, blushing. “Oh, no, I’m _really_ not. If anyone is brave here it’s you two-“ 

Vivi was nodding. “She’s right!” she said. “I can’t imagine attending an event like the Reverie so soon after something like that-” 

Shirahoshi tried to keep protesting, but her voice failed her, and she could only shake her head, her whole face gone bright pink. Vivi and Rebecca were both so strong, so courageous, a pirate and a gladiator, fighters to the bone for all their bright dresses and pretty braids. 

Shirahoshi wasn’t really anything like them. She was nowhere near as brave. 

But maybe, someday, she could be. 

She wanted to be.


	35. sengoku + legacy

High-ranking marines didn’t often have families. 

Mostly, it was simple cause and effect. Those most single-mindedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice were those who rose the highest, and they were also those less inclined to waste time and focus on things like spouses, children, friends. 

Besides, attachments opened up all sorts of messy potential for distractions, hesitations, conflicts of interest, and nobody wanted that. Pursuit of justice should be clean, blind, and absolute. 

So Sengoku had never expected to have a family- especially after seeing the mess Garp was currently making of things with his own son. That debacle alone was more than enough to convince him it was a wholehearted mistake for marines to have children. 

But. Well. 

Circumstances arose. 

(And besides, Rocinante was a good kid. Quiet, anxious. There was no way he’d ever get himself into the sort of trouble Garp’s hellspawn son did, Sengoku told himself, and stubbornly did not think about the fact that Dragon had been a good kid once, too.)

He would be the first to admit he didn’t know how to parent, nor did he have much help; almost none of his colleagues had children of their own, and it would be a cold day in hell before he asked _Garp_ for advice. So it was left to him and a traumatized, skittish six-year-old who most of the time wouldn’t or couldn’t speak to figure things out between them. 

They managed to make it work.

Rocinante practically attached himself to Sengoku in the beginning, tagging along in his shadow, watching the passing chaos of headquarters with wide, anxious eyes. But over the years he got bolder, brighter, more outgoing and excitable. It always felt like a victory to see him smile. 

Rocinante was twelve when he decided he wanted to be a marine. 

Sengoku had never intended to have kids, but it would be a lie to say he wasn’t almost unbearably proud of him. By the time Rocinante was old enough to enter the marines proper, he was quick, clever, and had dead-perfect aim, even if he still tended to trip over his own feet. He’d rise through the ranks quickly, Sengoku knew. He had a brilliant future ahead of him. 

It felt good to have a legacy to leave behind. 

(For several years, there was a common argument, in a certain office of Marine Headquarters, whenever the topic of conversation turned to family and legacy.

“At least my boy became a marine.” 

“Well- at least mine gave me grandkids!” 

It was common, until it wasn’t.)


	36. marco + yesterday

Yesterday, everything was fine. 

Marco has a great memory. He needs to, to keep track of as much as he does amidst the daily chaos of the Whitebeard Pirates. He can remember exactly what happened yesterday. 

They’d gotten into a minor skirmish with some no-name rookie crew who’d jumped into the New World too fast and let their early successes get the better of them; Vista had nearly cut the sail in half showing off to some of his newer division members; Izou had come back from a brief solo mission to check out some disturbances on the edge of their territory. 

Yesterday everything was fine, and normal, and no matter how he racks his brain he can’t remember any warning signs, anything he could have done differently, and yet. 

And yet. 

He’s standing in the middle of the deck, watching blood dry into the cracks between the boards. He’s distantly aware that Ace is _screaming_ , because he’s _furious_ , and Marco should probably be angry too- will be, later, once this has gone from _something that can’t be happening_ to _something that happened_. 

Right now, though- blood is drying, and Ace is screaming, and someone is crying, and someone else is yelling that a lifeboat is missing, and-

Yesterday, everything was fine. 

And he doesn’t know if it ever will be again. 


	37. ace + lies

Ace was a liar. He always had been, ever since the very first time he introduced himself as _Portgas D._ Ace, spitting out the words like a challenge to anyone who dared to question them. 

He’d always been a liar, but there was only one lie he ever felt _bad_ about. 

Luffy had been crying, yanking his hat down over his eyes like he couldn’t bear the sight of the ocean that had been both of their dreams for so long now, the ocean that was now their brother’s grave, and the way his voice had cracked and wavered and _broken_ as he _pleaded_ -

His little brother had been on the edge of a cliff just then in more than just the literal sense; even at ten years old Ace had been able to see that. One brother buried at sea, and only one left, and no telling what would happen if he lost them both. 

And so Ace had said the only thing he could, and made a promise he knew even then he’d never be able to keep. 

_I won’t die._

And it had been a lie, and he’d known it was a lie (because there was _never_ going to be any way that he let himself outlive Luffy, who was the only precious thing left in his life), and he’d said it anyways. 

He would have said anything, in that moment, to see Luffy smile again.

(He would’ve liked to see Luffy smile one more time, before-)

Luffy was crying against his shoulder, in that broken little-kid way he’d long since grown out of, tears falling against burned and ravaged skin, and Ace had just enough thought left to think, _oh, here we are again_.

No lies that would soften the loss, this time around. 

He’d just have to spend his last moments on honesty. 


	38. luffy + laughter

If you were to ask Nami her favorite color, she’d say orange, the color of sunsets and old coins and tangerines most of all. If you asked Sanji, he’d say blue, the color of freedom, of boundless sea and sky and of faraway oceans of dreams. 

Usopp has a new favorite color every week, depending on what colorful gadget or trinket last caught his eye. Zoro says he doesn’t have one at all, but really it’s the soft silver of a blade perfectly cleaned, marker of a job well done. 

Chopper’s favorite color is light, warm cherry-blossom pink. Robin’s is midnight purple-blue, the color of dark oceans and yet darker skies and poneglyph stone. Brook loves whatever color is brightest at the moment, whatever’s most vivid and vibrant and so far from foggy, interminable grey. Franky can never choose between blue and red. 

Jinbe’s favorite color is sunshine yellow. 

But if you were to ask them all their favorite _sound_ , you’d get the same answer every single time:

The best sound in the world is Luffy’s laughter.


	39. usopp pirates + stories

“Men. Ready for action?” Piiman asked, arms folded.

“Ready!” Ninjin and Tamanegi chorused, standing straight-backed, proud and tall as soldiers going to war. 

“Do we understand our mission?” 

“We do!” 

“And we understand that failure is not acceptable!” 

“We do!” 

This was their most important task, the pinnacle of their duty, and they’d been carrying it out for more than two years now without fail. Piiman let a grin slip through, bright and excited, and then turned to ring the doorbell. 

It was less than a minute’s wait before the door swung open and Miss Kaya was smiling down at them (though not so far down as she used to- they’d grown, all four of them, in more ways than one). 

“Hello again, you three,” she said. “What sort of stories have you got for me today?” 

“ _Pirate_ stories!” Tamanegi cheered.

Miss Kaya laughed. “The best kind,” she said. “Well, come in, then!”


	40. nami + sharp

There was a pair of girls walking down the beach. They were wearing flowing skirts and big smiles, lit by the late afternoon sun, giggling together at some inside joke. They had soft, round faces, well-fed and used to laughing, their skin unmarred by ink or scars. 

Nami leaned against the railing, and watched, and _ached_. 

That could’ve been- should’ve been- her and Nojiko, in a kinder world, a softer one. She guessed their ages at fifteen or sixteen; so much older than she’d been, and yet they looked so young to her now. 

She wondered if they were going home to dinner with their mother. 

An elbow bumped hers, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Quit that.” 

She blinked, glanced up and around. Zoro was standing next to her, back against the railing, a bottle in one hand. She hadn’t noticed him approach, caught up in her thoughts as she’d been. “What?” she said, and then, when his words registered, “Shut up,” though it came out without any real heat.

He shrugged, unfazed. “I’m just saying. There’s no point sulking. If any of us had had that,” he said, nodding back towards the two girls, “we wouldn’t be here.” 

He popped the cork out of the bottle, took a swig out of it, then offered it silently over to her. She looked at him for a moment, then sighed and took it, throwing back a deep enough drink to dampen the aching in her chest. 

“I’m not saying pain is good,” Zoro said after a moment, “but it makes you sharp. Sharp is good. You can’t cut shit with a dull sword. Those two? Wouldn’t hack it for a second aboard a pirate ship. Especially not the future Pirate King’s.” 

For a moment, Nami couldn’t _breathe_ around the lump in her throat. 

“…I like you better when you’re stupid,” she told him, but the effect was probably ruined by the wobbly smile that she couldn’t quite fight off her face. 

He snorted, turned back to look out at the vast blue sunlit expanse of ocean, but not before she saw that he was smiling, too. “Sure you do.”


	41. yamato + stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers!!!!! also abuse ment tw

The whole left side of his face was throbbing. 

He couldn’t quite see out of the eye on that side, the eyelid already swelling up, and his cheek felt like it was on fire. He carefully reached up to prod at his cheekbone- the skin covering it was hot and puffy, already bruising. 

At least it wasn’t broken- at least his father wouldn’t go that far. 

( ~~Would he?~~ ) 

He slammed the door to his room behind him as hard as he could with all the force of the frustration he couldn’t put anywhere else, and waited a moment, back pressed against the cool wood and shoulders not quite shaking, to make sure no footsteps approached. 

(He knew his father wouldn’t come looking for him. He never did, after a fight. He always waited, anyways. Just to be safe.) 

Nothing. He let himself exhale, long and slow, and then crossed his room to his closet, ducking inside and pulling the door shut behind him. It was dark inside, but the darkness was comforting, and enough light filtered in around the door that he could still see, if dimly. 

He found the loose board without having to search- after so many years, he could’ve found his way to this room, to that board, even in complete darkness. He pulled the infinitely precious little book out of its hiding place, hugged it close to his heart for a moment. 

There was a little lantern tucked away in the floorspace too, and he lit it and hung it on the old nail driven into the wall, filling the narrow closet space with light enough to read by. There was a pile of old clothes in the corner, soft and worn, and he sat down, curling up and pulling his knees close to his chest. He was safe, here. 

Just him, and his stories. 

He opened the book to words he already knew by heart, and began to read. 


	42. iceburg + connections

Everybody in Water Seven knows Iceburg- Iceburg the mayor, president and founder of Galley-La Company, the city’s first and favorite son. They love him, for everything he’s done and will do, and he loves them back. The city is his life and love and duty, and he’d have it no other way.

But there’s only one person left who knows Iceburg the apprentice, Iceburg of Tom’s Workers, and now and then when he gets heartsick for a home that no longer exists, he takes the train down to the Blue Station with a bottle of wine and knocks on the door. 

Kokoro’s smile when she sees him always makes her look thirty years younger.

They’ve both moved on, in their ways, her with children and grandchildren, him with projects and politics, and yet he can’t help but feel that neither of them ever really left that scrapyard dry-dock, that cluttered office. So... it’s nice, now and again, to sit, and drink, and reminisce.

“Do you remember,” he says, leaning back in one of Kokoro’s overstuffed armchairs and staring up at the low ceiling, “that time we had to pause work on the sea train for almost a week because that massive storm wrecked the tracks we were laying?” 

Kokoro cackles. “I do!” she says. “Still not as bad a delay as when Franky got it in his head to ‘improve’ the coal furnace on his own.” 

“Oh, hell, I remember that,” Iceburg groans, pressing his face into his hand for a moment. “He fucked it up so badly we had to replace like half the steel paneling.” 

“That reminds me! Have you seen his new wanted poster?” 

“I was given no choice,” he says drily. “Mozu and Kiwi won’t stop shoving it in my face. It looks ridiculous. What, is he a robot now?” 

“Ha! Maybe!” Kokoro laughs, taking another swig of wine. “You know that boy never did know how to quit.” She lowers the bottle to smile over at him. “You both grew up good, you know. Done good by yourselves and by the city.” 

The waves are lapping against the concrete moorings outside, and the fireplace burning bright, and Iceburg loves his city and his job but he wouldn’t trade these moments of remembrance, of memorial, of a brief connection to a home he can’t go back to for _anything_.

Kokoro smiles, warm, and says, “Tom would be proud.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have so many feelings about tom's workers


	43. luffy + ship

Luffy loves the ocean. 

Luffy _loves_ the ocean. 

He loves its clear blue shallows and its deep, mysterious depths; its endless horizon and the way the sun breaks over it each morning to promise a new day of light and life and adventure; its boundless _freedom_ most of all.

Luffy was always going to go to sea, no matter what Garp said, who he blamed. There was never going to be any other place for him. The ocean was always going to be his home, his dream, his path to walk. 

But Luffy can’t swim. 

He was always going to need a ship. 

He leaves Dawn Island in a rowboat, because it’s what he has and it gets him to sea and that’s all he needs, at least right then. It sinks before the day is out, sucked to the bottom of the ocean. He steals a new boat from Alvida, another from Buggy, but-

They’re all boats, and they serve their purpose well, but none of them are _his_ boat. They can carry him to the next stop on his journey, the next island, the next crewmate, but no further. He knows that none of them will be able to take him where he wants to go. 

So when he stands on the beach of Syrup Village and looks up at the caravel, small but sturdy, he _knows_ -

 _This_ is the ship that will carry him to the horizon. 


	44. smoker + humane

“The children are asleep, sir,” Tashigi reported, her voice soft, as though to avoid waking their passengers, now resting in the improvised nursery belowdecks. Many of the men had gladly surrendered their bunks for the children to have someplace to rest.

Smoker sighed, settled back against the pillows. The slashing wounds criss-crossing his torso still ached and burned beneath the bandages, not yet begun to heal. He was going to have a lot of scars, once they came off, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care. 

“Good,” he said. “Any side effects?” He paused, then clarified, “…Besides the obvious?” 

Tashigi’s lips pulled into a frown as she leaned against the doorframe, the small movement betraying how tired she must have been. Normally she would never be so casual in the presence of her superior officer, not that Smoker would ever dream of reprimanding her for it. 

“We won’t know until we reach Vegapunk,” she said. “But… they seem alright, from what I can tell. No withdrawal symptoms, either. It seems like Trafalgar-“ and her face twisted in a complicated mix of fury and resignation at the name- “knew what he was doing.” 

“Good,” Smoker said, and it came out half a sigh. His whole chest hurt. 

“Sir?” 

“What?” 

“Permission to speak freely?” 

Smoker waved a hand in wordless agreement, wincing at the unexpected line of pain that shot up his arm at the movement. _Fucking_ Doflamingo. 

Tashigi was quiet for a moment, worrying her lip and not meeting his eyes, before she said, “We should have known sooner. Sir. Those children are our jurisdiction. Our responsibility. And they were being experimented on, _tortured_ … and if it wasn’t for the pirates, we never would’ve known at all. And without them, we wouldn’t even have survived.“ 

She stared down at the floor. “It’s Alabasta all over again. It’s like nothing changed at all.”

Smoker frowned. “Don’t be stupid, Tashigi,” he snapped, harsher than he meant to, pain and frustration sharpening his tone. “If _nothing had changed_ , then those kids would still be dying in that goddamn facility. Instead they’re going to see their families again.” 

She blinked up at him, looking startled. “But-“ 

“I don’t like owing debts to pirates any more than you do,” Smoker said. “But what’s important right now isn’t how we feel. It’s the kids. Because you’re right. We failed them. _We’re not going to do it again_.” 

Tashigi swallowed hard, nodded. She looked like she was about to cry. 

“We’re going to treat them well, get them healthy, see them home,” Smoker said, in a tone that left no room for debate. “That’s all you need to worry about.” 

Tashigi nodded again, swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was smiling, though, and the hopeless, anxious look that had been lingering on her face was gone. 

“Yes, sir.” 


	45. sabo + hope

“Have you been up all night?” a familiar voice asks, and Sabo looks up, squinting in the dim light. He has to blink a couple times and tip his head to get her on his good side before the fuzzy silhouette on the other side of his desk resolves itself into Koala, frowning down at him. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says. It’s not a lie. He doesn’t like paperwork, but he’d much rather stare at dry facts and figures than old, painful memories and vivid could-have-beens. He doesn’t think he’s gotten an uninterrupted night of sleep since the Paramount War. 

She sighs, sets a steaming cup down in front of his hand, and he downs the whole thing in two gulps before he realizes- “This isn’t coffee.” 

“No. It’s hot chocolate,” she says, folding her arms as he looks accusingly at the empty cup in his hand. “I’m _not_ giving you coffee until you’ve slept at least six hours.” 

He gives her a pout they both know she’s long since grown immune to, but is distracted after a moment by the paper folded under her arm. “Is that the morning news?” 

“I already checked,” Koala says, “no mention of him,” but she hands the paper over anyways without him needing to ask, and he loves her a little for it. 

He opens it, scans through the articles, even knowing there’s nothing to find. One of these days- weeks, months, Robin says two years but that’s _so far away_ \- there will be. 

He _has_ to believe that.

He doesn’t look up when Koala sits on the edge of his desk, but he can feel her concerned stare on his skin anyways. “Sabo-kun,” she says, gentle, careful, “you know… it’s been a long time, since he last appeared. I’m…” 

She trails off for a moment. “…I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” she says finally, “by… getting your hopes up.” 

He knows she’s right, but he can’t _not_. 

Luffy _has_ to still be out there. He has to show up in the paper again, one of these days, grinning like an idiot in a wanted-poster photo over an article about the dozen new problems he’s caused. He has to, and Sabo has to believe that, because if he _doesn’t_ \- 

Sabo doesn’t let himself think about that. 

“He’s out there somewhere,” he says, because he can’t say anything else. “You’ll see.” 

She sighs, fond and sad and tired, and turns away. “I hope you’re right,” she says. “I really do.” 

(So does he.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sabo is one of my favorite characters so it genuinely baffles me that it took me this long for him to get a chapter


	46. kalifa + desert

Kalifa would not be the first one to complain. She would not. She refused, even as sweat glued her hair to her skull and dripped down the small of her back. She was not going to be the weakest link. She _refused_ \- 

“It’s so _fucking hot_ ,” Jabra groaned, breaking the tense, watchful silence, and Kalifa carefully did not smile. _Triumph_. 

“Shut up,” Lucci said immediately, without so much as twitching at the sudden noise. He didn’t break his watchful stare on the doors of the palace for a moment. Unbidden, Kalifa's mind supplied the image of a cat lurking over a mousehole, waiting to pounce.

The three of them were tucked up in the pinnacle of a tall, ancient sandstone tower, shielded from the sun (and any prying eyes that happened to wander upwards, although civilians so rarely looked up) but not from the pervasive desert heat. Kalifa felt like she was baking from the inside out. She didn’t understand how people could _live_ here. 

Jabra did not shut up. “What kind of job is this for CP0 operatives, huh? Shit, we should’ve stayed as fucking street performers if this is how they’re gonna treat us! At least then we were clowns on _purpose._ ” 

Kalifa sighed, and gave her colleague a withering glare. “You idiot. Did you lose what little critical thinking skills you had when you got your head kicked in? We’re being _hazed_. The first jobs are always the worst. They’re washing out anyone who can’t take the heat. As it were.” 

She raised an eyebrow, tilting her head towards the narrow stairway entrance that led down from the oven-hot lookout post. “You can always leave.” 

Of course, he didn’t. Jabra was even more stubborn than he was impulsive, for better or for worse, and he scowled at her and crossed his arms defiantly as he settled back against the rough sandstone wall. “I ain’t going anywhere.” 

“Shh,” Lucci hissed, suddenly deadly still and serious, and both of them went silent immediately, moving to track his line of sight to woman stepping out of the doors of the palace, a guard at her back. “I see her.” 

Blue hair, visible even at this distance, strikingly vibrant against the brown and white landscape. 

All three of them watched silently and intently as the princess of Alabasta held a brief conversation with the guard; left on her own to proceed to the street market a few blocks away; and spent a few hours mingling with the citizens and shopkeepers, making frequent purchases and stopping even more often for conversations. 

By the time she returned to the palace once more, Kalifa felt _exhausted_. 

“It’s been _two weeks_ ,” Jabra snarled, unknowingly voicing her own thoughts. “And we haven’t caught her at _anything_.” 

“Either she’s completely upright and innocent,” Kalifa agreed, “or one of the best actresses I’ve ever seen.”

“Of _course_ she’s innocent,” Jabra said irritably. “Just look at her. Suspected of engaging with pirates my _ass_. This job is a goddamn dead end. I can’t wait to get out of this fucking desert.” 

Privately, Kalifa agreed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vivi is absolutely fucking with them


	47. laboon + melody

_Binkusu no sake wo, todoke ni yuku yo…_

A fact you may not remember: whales communicate through song. 

Whales do not see well, nor do they smell. Such senses are muted enough in the depths of the ocean to be nigh-useless, in any case. But they hear, and they sing, and they remember. 

Laboon heard a melody lifetimes ago, and has never stopped singing it since. 

_…ho ni hata ni ketateru wa dokuro…_

The years have worn on, and on, and _on_ , and names have faded, and faces, blurred by the long decades into smiling silhouettes, but the melody still plays, in his head and in his heart. 

It will never cease, so long as he lives, and Island Whales live a _very_ long time. 

And so Laboon hums to himself, and carves the melody into his bones so that it may never be forgotten, and someday, someday, _someday_ \- 

He’ll hear it again. 

_…hatenashi, atenashi, waraibanashi…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i used the japanese lyrics of binks sake for this because those are the ones i know- in order the three lines used here are "we're going to deliver binks' sake", "a skull on our flag and on our sail", and "an endless, aimless tale of laughter."


	48. pudding + common sense

Pudding likes to think of herself as sensible. 

She follows the rules, obeys her mother’s orders, hurts others to keep them hurting her. It’s logical. It’s the only way she’s found yet to keep herself safe. She smiles, and dances, and builds walls upon walls around her battered heart, and nobody ever hurts her anymore. 

It’s only common sense. 

She respects her big siblings so they’ll love her, and pampers her little siblings so they’ll love her, and caters to her mother so she’ll love her, and guides her citizens so they’ll love her, and so-

-so why is she only just know realizing she doesn’t know and has never known what it feels like to be _loved_? 

That’s the problem, really. Now that she knows what love _is_ , it’s suddenly impossible to fake, and just as impossible to live without. Her face and voice don’t always do what she wants them to do anymore. Acting has always been so natural to her, second nature, survival instinct, and all of a sudden it just _isn’t_ , and she doesn’t know what to do. 

Except she does.

She knows exactly what she should do. 

She’s always been sensible, after all. 

The door to her room is double-locked to ensure nobody will come in, nobody will interrupt, nobody will _see_. She sits half-curled up in the plush armchair in the corner, a film-roll of memory unreeled across her knees. The polished steel of the scissors feels so bitingly cold against her hand. 

Sanji stares up at her, frozen in time and memory, eyes widening in awe and wonder ( _why?_ she still doesn’t _understand-_ ) and mouth opening to speak the words that will flip her world upside down and break her mind to pieces and put it back together all wrong. She inhales, holds the breath in her chest, rests the scissors against the celluloid. 

It’s only common sense. 

This moment is where all the problems started. If she removes the memory, there will be no more problems, and no more confusion, and the world can go back to being as easy and uncomplicated ( _and loveless and lifeless and-_ ) as it used to be. 

And she wants that. She does she does she _does._

Her hand feels frozen, unwilling. She forces it to move anyways. 

As soon as the edge of the blade bites into the film, a bolt of absolute _panic_ shoots through her chest, and she chokes back a scream and hurls the scissors clear across the room. They hit the wall and clatter to the floor, and she buries her face in her skirts and celluloid and waits for her heartbeat to calm again. 

She can’t do it. She knows she should. She still can’t. 

This is the eighth time she’s tried. The eighth time she’s stuttered to a halt at the last minute, unable to go through with it. She’s never failed at _anything_ before, except for shooting Sanji between the eyes. 

She should do it. She needs to. It’s only common sense. 

But she _can’t_. 


	49. bellemere + life

Bellemere had spent a long time assuming she would die staring down the barrel of a gun, but she’d never thought it would be quite like this. 

(She’ll admit the fishman is a surprise, for one.) 

She’s had more than her share of close calls over the years. One from a couple years before her unplanned retirement comes to mind, when she and her squad were clearing a pirate hideout. They’d thought the place already empty; the sweep had been cursory, nothing more than a last double-check.

That was where she’d fucked up. She hadn’t been looking, had glanced down to pull a fresh cigarette out of the pack in her pocket as she turned a blind corner, and had looked up again just in time to see the hammer click back on a pistol aimed right between her eyes. 

For a moment, she’d been sure she would die there, frozen in place, the black maw of the gun’s barrel swallowing her vision. She’d tasted resignation behind her teeth, thicker than rage and more bitter than sorrow, a tired sort of regret that she’d never managed to make anything of her life after all. 

There had been a frantic shout- “ _Bellemere-san!_ ” -and a body crashing into hers, tackling her out of the way in the moment before the pistol fired. She’d laid prone on the floor for a moment, breathing too hard, trying to blink the image of the inside of the barrel out of her eyes, as her rescuer laid into the scrawny pirate who’d nearly done her in. 

(Smoker always had been a good kid, she thinks. She hopes he’s okay, wherever he is now.)

She remembers thinking, then, _I’ll never be this lucky again._

There’s a gun pointed between her eyes, and this time, there’s nobody coming to save her. She’s okay with that. This time, there’s no bitter aftertaste of regret on her tongue. She glances over to smile at Nami and Nojiko. 

Yeah. She’s happy with her life.


	50. helmeppo + change

“Hey,” Helmeppo says into the darkness and quiet of the infirmary. “Did you ever think our lives would turn out like this?” 

There’s a rough, tired chuckle from Coby’s bed. The idiot should definitely be sleeping, but Helmeppo isn’t gonna push it, because every time Coby’s actually managed to fall asleep for the past few days he’s woken up screaming, and it’s playing absolute hell on his already-frayed nerves. 

“Nope,” Coby says. “But I was also sure I was probably gonna die before I turned eighteen, so.” 

“Oh,” Helmeppo says, because he forgets, sometimes, how fucked up Coby’s life was before he joined the Marines. The reminders are only occasional, but always uncomfortable, in a way that slips under his skin and lingers. 

It’ll never be comfortable to remember that his best friend, who is stronger and kinder and _better_ than him, was living in daily fear of his life at the same time Helmeppo was acting like king of the world, endlessly abusing power that wasn’t even his. 

Helmeppo never, ever could’ve imagined this future back then. It’s so utterly different from everything he’d ever lived or dreamed. It’s so much scarier, and so much harder, and so much more dangerous, but-

“But, you know,” Coby says, Coby who nearly got wiped off the face of the earth five days ago and hasn’t stopped shaking with night terrors since, and despite all that he’s _smiling_ , “I’m glad things turned out the way they did.” 

And, well. There’s only one thing Helmeppo can say to that, isn’t there. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”


	51. koala + family

“Do you think they’ll recognize me?” Koala asked, and her voice was soft as ever, but the galley still went quiet around her. She was tucked onto the bench next to Tiger, and he could see she was staring down at her hands, the calluses rubbed into her fingertips and the lash-scars crossing her palms. 

A few uncertain glances were exchanged across the table before Hachi, on her other side, said, “Who?” 

“My family,” Koala said, tightening her hands into anxious fists in her lap. “My mom… and my grandpa and grandma and my aunts and cousins…” 

“Oh!” Hachi said brightly, and reached over to rub a hand through her hair. “Is that what you’re worried about? Of course they will! They’re your family!” 

“But…” Koala said, hesitated, stared down at the wood of the table. “But it’s been so _long_ …” 

Jinbe, who’d been watching in silence from across the table, suddenly spoke up, voice and face careful and serious. “How long? How old were you when you were taken?” 

“Ah…” Koala bit her lip, counted on her fingers for a few seconds. “…Three? Or four?”

The atmosphere in the room _froze_ , a number of the crew stiffening in their seats or flinching back. Tiger’s shoulders tightened, just slightly, a chill running down his spine. 

“…I don’t remember,” Koala said. “I think… I might’ve had my birthday right before… or maybe I was just excited for it? I can’t remember… I’m sorry.” 

The galley was silent for a long moment before Tiger managed to find his voice. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Koala,” he said. “Hachi’s right. I’m sure they’ll know you. And- even if they don’t, we’ll make sure you find them.” 

It was a reckless promise, perhaps, but he’d always been a reckless person, and looking at Koala’s expression, tight and trembling and anxious beyond words, he couldn’t have said anything less. 

And- if they couldn’t. If her family had left in the intervening years, or passed away, or worst of all didn’t want her anymore- well. The crew had all come to care for her well enough, over the weeks and months she’d sailed with them, and she was a sweet kid, eager to help out wherever she could. And she already bore their mark on her back. 

One way or another, Koala would be with family. Tiger would make sure of it. 


	52. zoro + dancing

With her, it had been like dancing. There was no other word for it.

They’d learned each other’s patterns, each other’s every move, worn into habit, into _choreography_ , over the course of hundreds and hundreds of fights. He would never demean her so much as to call her predictable, but there had been a rhythm to her movements, and he’d learned it just as she learned his. 

And then she died, and Zoro hasn’t danced since. 

He’s _fought_ , sure, plenty of times, more than he can begin to count, from simple fights that were over in a single slash to duels that challenged him down to the very marrow of his bones, and even one that ended in utter and humiliating defeat. He’s fought thousands of fights, against thousands of opponents.

But he only ever _danced_ with her.

He knows he’ll probably never reach that point again, that intimacy of knowing someone so well as to know their next move before they do, of learning over hard-fought days and months and years how to read the flickers in their eyes and the shifting of their feet like a language in itself. In a way, he doesn’t want to. It was special, what he had with her. It’s not something that he needs or wants to replicate with anyone else. 

It’s been years and years and countless battles and still, whenever he draws his stance to begin a fight, he angles his sword to block her favorite overhand slash.

Zoro stands on the moonlit deck, barefoot. The night is quiet, but for the waves lapping at the hull, the low whistle of wind through the rigging. 

He bows to a ghost, draws his swords, and begins to dance. 


	53. rebecca + courage

Rebecca wakes up to a splash of sunlight on her face, in her eyes, and for a moment it shoves a knife of panic straight through her chest. Sunlight in her eyes is _bad_ , means she’ll be blinded for a moment, and worse, means it’s reflecting off of something, armor or a shield or a blade rising to _strike_ \- 

She throws herself backwards to dodge the incoming attack, snapping her Observation Haki outwards and reaching for a sword that isn’t there. One of her feet gets tangled in the blankets, throwing her off balance as she tumbles out of bed and crashes to the floorboards with an impact that drives the breath from her lungs and jolts her the rest of the way awake. 

She’s not in the colosseum. 

The low, slanted log roof of the cabin hangs above her head. From where she’s lying, she can see the pictures hanging on the walls, of her and her father, of her mother and her aunt as girls. She can see the morning sunlight beaming in through the window. On the other side of the small house, her father had startled to his feet at the crash, radiating concern. 

She’s _not in the colosseum_. 

“Rebecca?” her father asks, hurriedly crossing the room to kneel down at her side, gently placing a hand to her back and guiding her up to a sitting position. (He’s always so gentle with her.) “Are you alright?” 

She tries to tell him she’s fine, but the words stick in her throat, her heart still beating rabbit-fast against her ribs. She closes her eyes tight and nods, pressing a hand to her chest and waiting for her heartbeat to slow again. He sits down beside her, rubs her back in slow, calming circles, and it helps. 

After a long moment, once she’s wrestled her breathing under control again, he asks, “Nightmare?” 

“I… no,” she says, quiet. “No, it was- um. The sunlight? In my eyes. From the window. For a moment, I thought…” 

Her voice fails her again, refuses to voice the terror that had rushed through her veins like ice, but he seems to understand what she’s saying anyways, because his eyes widen, and he looks up at the window with a thoughtful frown. Right, she remembers a moment late. He was a gladiator once, too. 

“We can turn your bed around,” he decides. “Put the headboard against the other wall. Then you shouldn’t have the sun in your eyes in the morning.” 

She nods, a little jerkily, her heart still thumping off-beat in her chest. It’s a good solution. It won’t fix the real problem, though, and they both know it. 

“Rebecca?” he asks, after she’s silent for a moment too long. 

“I hate this,” she says quietly. She doesn’t explain, but she doesn’t need to, really. 

He’s quiet for a long minute before he sighs, moving to press his back against hers, taking her weight as she leans against him. With the adrenaline faded away once more, now she just feels wrung-out and tired, even though it’s still so early in the day. 

“Courage isn’t the absence of fear,” he says. “It’s the ability to carry it with you. You’ve carried a lot of fear for a very long time. I’m sorry I wasn’t always there to help you. But it can be hard, after all that time, to finally put it down. It takes time.” 

He squeezes her hand, gentle. 

“For what it’s worth,” he says. “I think you’re the bravest person I know.” 


	54. miss goldenweek + imagination

Marianne looked up at the blank white wall, frozen by infinite potential.

So many possibilities. So many ideas. Where to even begin, on this massive canvas? From the center? From an edge? Her imagination spiraled out, conjuring mural after mural. She could draw a desert landscape- oh, or a jungle scene- or maybe even an underwater tableau! 

There was a chuckle from the bar behind her. “You alright there, Marianne?” Paula asked. Marianne could imagine her, propping an elbow on the bar with her hips popped to one side, a smile on her lips. 

“Mhm,” Marianne hummed, eyes still fixed on the plank wall. What if she painted a night sky vista, spotted with moons, dotted with stars, spiraling with nebulae? 

“You haven’t started painting yet.” 

“Mmm.” Maybe she should go totally abstract, wild spirals of color and form, tugging the eye along from point to point and curve to curve, unlimited by the confines of realism. But then she did so love detail work, too-

“How come?” 

“Can’t decide,” Marianne said, chewing on the end of her paintbrush. “Too many ideas.” 

And besides, she wouldn’t say it aloud, but this painting was _important_. It would cover all of the largest wall of the new Spiders Cafe. Any and all customers who entered would see it. She wanted it to be good. Not perfect, because art was never perfect, art thrived in imperfection, but _good_. As good as it could possibly be. 

“Well,” Paula said, “if you don’t like it, you can always paint over and try again?” 

“Hmm.” That was true. There was something familiar about that thought, something she loved. The ability to wipe clean, and start again, and create whatever she wanted, paint whatever she wanted, be whatever she wanted.

She dipped her brush into the dollop of blue paint on her pallet. 

She’d start with the ocean.


	55. hiyori + waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers in this chapter!!

She sat alone at the low table, legs folded seiza beneath her. She could hear the revelry outside clearly through the thin wood and rice-paper walls, the citizens celebrating in the streets and the fireworks exploding in the skies. The plucking of the shamisen was quiet by comparison, but it reverberated around the empty room, the notes slow and melancholy. 

_Play it at my funeral._

(He’d never gotten one. Kawamatsu had taken her to the graves once, once it was safe enough to do so. Simple wooden posts scraped with charcoal, poorer than a pauper’s cemetery. There had been no ceremony. Why would there have been, to commemorate the passing of a fool, a traitor, a joke?)

One of the shouji doors into the room slid open, then shut. There was the rustle of geta being slid off and the soft sound of socked feet crossing the tatami before Kyoshirou sat down across the table from her. He looked at her for a long moment; she wondered what he saw, when he did. Wondered how much she resembled her parents. 

“You aren’t attending the festivities, Komurasaki?” he asked at last. 

“I am not,” she confirmed, staring down at the instrument in her lap. 

“The people will be disappointed, at the absence of one of the capital’s favorite yuujo.” 

“Let them be. I don’t want to entertain anyone tonight,” she said, and they sat in silence for a moment before she said, “…Denjirou?” 

“Names, Komurasaki,” he cautioned her gently, but she saw him straighten to attention nonetheless. 

“It’s…” she started, trailed off, resumed. “It’s been ten years.” 

“It has.” 

She bit her lip. “Only halfway.” 

“Yes.” 

She balled her hands into the fabric of her kimono, digging nails into the expensive embroidery. “Why does it have to be so _long_? Why twenty years? Why aren’t they-“ 

Her voice caught, hitched, shattered. She pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from crying, swallowing back the sobs struggling to climb up her throat. 

“…why aren’t they _back yet_?” she finally whispered. 

“…I don’t know,” he admitted after a long moment. “But we mustn’t lose faith. Your mother was the wisest woman I ever knew. She never did anything without good reason. Trust in her, if nothing else.” 

She nodded, miserable. He was right; she knew he was. For all her family’s grief and misfortune, her mother had never, ever steered her wrong. 

She was just so _tired_ of _waiting_. 

“How about,” he suggested after a moment, “you come to the festival with me. And if men come and try to bother you, you can tell me which of them should not survive the month, hm?” 

She laughed despite herself, a watery sound. “That’s _terrible_.” 

“So am I, haven’t you heard?” he said, but he was grinning. 

She rolled her eyes, but there was a smile tugging at her lips despite her best efforts. “Alright,” she conceded. “But you have to help me put up my hair first. I can’t do it on my own.” 

“As the lady commands,” he agreed with a bow, and she snorted, swatting at him across the table with a sleeve. 

At least she wasn’t waiting alone. 


	56. brook + warmth

The worst part of death, Brook thinks, is the cold. 

Death is a kind of cold that creeps, digging down into muscle and bone as it bites through veins and nerve endings, killing them off to rot. Once inside, it lingers, rests quiet and hungry inside the ribcage where a beating heart once was, and never, ever leaves. 

Humans are warm-blooded creatures, after all, and the absence of that warmth _hurts_. (Even when one doesn’t _have_ any blood!- no, he can do better than that.)

It’s alright, though. Brook’s had a very long time to get used to it. 

He’s even found a way to make use of it, channelling the chill from his bones into his blade and leaving cuts that burn with cold, and anything that lets him be more useful to his captain and his crew is something to be valued. So it’s fine. 

But- 

It’s midnight after a particularly lively celebratory banquet, and the deck of the Sunny is scattered with sleeping pirates. Brook finds himself sitting against the mast with Luffy’s arms tangled around his torso, his head cushioned against Brook’s ribcage as he snores softly, practically radiating heat like the sunburst in human form he is. Nami’s head is resting against one of his shoulders as she dozes, and Chopper’s snuggled up against his other side. 

Brook doesn’t mind being cold, not anymore. 

But it’s moments like this that remind him he _loves_ being _warm_. 


	57. merry + legacy

_Do you mind helping me hold the sail steady? They’ll patch it faster if it’s not flapping around so much._

_Oh, yes, of course. We’re in such a hurry, after all._

_Don’t worry! I’ll make it in time!_

A smile, fond and proud and shadowed by a hood. _Of course you will._

The final knot was drawn tight, the newly-patched sail run back up the mainmast. Their captain cried out two words almost lost in the howl of the wind and waves, two words they both knew by heart: “ _Set sail!_ ” 

_Hurry, then. No time to lose. We’ve got friends waiting._

The other grinned, bright and wild as sunshine. 

_Leave it to me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [WANO SPOILERS]
> 
> (in case it's unclear, this takes place after the thousand sunny is bombed and the strawhats have to repair the sail before setting out for the raid on onigashima)


	58. jinbe + fear

Luffy was shaking, when Jinbe met him. 

Not from fear, though- never, ever fear. It was exhaustion, trembling through his shoulders and down his arms, exhaustion and stress and pain. He’d looked so _small_ , against the towering walls and cavernous dungeons of Impel Down. Only seventeen, Ace had said, and Ace was still barely a child himself. 

But there had also been a fire in his eyes, a bone-deep determination that would keep him standing long after his body was ready to give. It was a look of someone who didn’t fear death, nor pain. 

They were alike, in that. 

Jinbe was no stranger to fear, but he’d never feared for _himself._ Ever since he was a reckless, sharp-eyed kid growing up in the Fishman District, where life was cheap as dirt, he’d known he would die someday and there wouldn’t be much mourning when it happened.

His fear had always been failure, not death. Fear of disappointing Tiger, at first; and then, once he became captain and shouldered the responsibility of the crew, that fear had only multiplied. Fear that one of his orders, one of his decisions, might lead to disaster for his brothers, for his crew, for his country. 

Jinbe never feared death half as much as he feared failing those he loved. And he’d press on no matter what, in the face of whatever pain laid ahead, if it meant protecting them. 

That was the look, amplified a thousandfold, that he saw in Luffy’s eyes when he met them through the bars. 

Jinbe liked him immediately. 


	59. enel + offering

He found it on the temple grounds, and always thought thereafter that that must have been a sign, a message. A miracle, made just for him. An offering from the heavens to their destined ruler. 

Vearth was scarce, on Birka. The largest piece of it they had was the centerpiece of the temple grounds, pride of the priests, and from it grew a tree, the only one of its kind. The tree’s fruit was always prized, always delicious, round and red and sweet. Special permissions from the priests were required to eat of it, for the vearth and its fruits were the property of god and god alone, to be stewarded by his servants. 

One day, though, after service, he found a fruit which was none of those things, nestled in the roots of the tree as though it had fallen from the branches. It was warped in shape, a strange mottled blue and yellow color instead of the usual bright red. There was something appealing about it despite its strangeness, something that drove him to forget taboo entirely and pick it up. 

One could be put to death for plucking fruit from the tree without permission. It was a crime, heresy to the highest degree, and yet as he cradled it in his hands he couldn’t help but feel as though it had been _meant_ for him, this fruit of the sacred tree. God’s bounty; god’s right. An offering for him and him alone. 

He bit into it, and tasted foulness and sin and _lightning_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love headcanoning how characters got their devil fruits


	60. makino + waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some makino/shanks in this one- background but i felt the need to mention cause this is generally a gen series

The bar is loud tonight, bright with laughter and cheerful shouting and the rattle of empty mugs clattering against tabletops. Pirates are rarely quiet creatures, especially when they have a night in port. Especially when they’re home. 

These are Makino’s favorite nights. 

“Do you ever get tired of it?” Benn asks, leaning back against the bar, and it takes a moment for her to realize he’s talking to her. 

“Hm?” 

“Waiting,” he explains, and she follows his gaze across the room to Shanks, rocked back in his chair with his feet up on a table and singing that old shanty, the one she’s heard from him many times before, the one about sake and sailing and laughter. “Figure it can’t be easy.” 

She hums. “Worthwhile things rarely are,” she says after a moment. “I’m just glad you made it back in time.” 

Benn snorts. “Nearly didn’t,” he admits. “The New World’s been an absolute shitshow lately, with all the upheaval since Whitebeard died. We even got challenged by one of those Supernova kids. Hard to find even a moment of peace, let alone the time to duck out to East Blue. Not that we would’ve ever missed it,” he adds as an afterthought. 

“I should hope not!” she says, readjusting the sleeping bundle in her arms, and Benn laughs. 

“He was frantic the whole way back, if that makes you feel better,” he says, and then, after a brief pause, “Surprised to see you on your feet again so soon. Aren’t new mothers supposed to stay in bed?” 

She laughs a little, rolls her eyes. “I might not be a pirate, but I’ve been on my feet since I was seventeen,” she scolds, her voice light. “Give me some credit. And besides…” 

The bar is ringing with laughter and song tonight, louder than it’s been in months, and it warms her down to her bones. The newborn in her arms mumbles a little, happily roused by the noise, and Makino’s smile feels too big for her face. 

Nights like this are what make the waiting worth it.

“Besides,” she says. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”


	61. denjirou + burials

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers!!!

Orochi is laughing. 

Orochi is laughing, cackling like a spoiled child, kicking his feet as he rocks back in his seat, because there’s been a fire in Ebisu Town and it’s so _funny_ , to him, watching the people desperately rush about for water as they race to get their children and what meagre possessions they have out of the way of the inferno. 

Kyoshirou’s fingers are itching, twitching for the handle of his blade, his blood running molten in his veins. Sometimes he thinks it started boiling that day, as the oil roiled and spat and the smell of cooking meat filled the air and the legends died, and hasn’t stopped since. Orochi’s laugh had been just as loathsome then as it is now, just as grating and hateful and obnoxious.

It would be so easy. Orochi would never see it coming. 

From where he’s standing at Orochi’s side, he could have the traitor’s head off before he even had time to blink. Or maybe it would be better to take it slower, take the time to smile and introduce himself before driving his katana into Orochi’s heart. Now _that_ would be delicious- the look on Orochi’s face as he realized in his dying moments that his paranoia had been justified all along. 

The thought brings a smile to his face. 

“Kyoshirou!” Orochi crows, leaning over to him. “Something funny? Tell me! Tell me!” 

“Nothing, my lord,” Kyoshirou says, and grins wider, and thinks of slitting Orochi’s neck and watching him bleed out slow, of leaving his body in the wastelands for the birds to pick at. “Just an old joke.” 

Lord Oden hadn’t gotten a proper burial, not even a proper grave. Kyoshirou would see to it that Orochi didn’t get one either. He didn’t care what it took, how long it took, how many years he had to wait. He didn’t care if it killed him. 

The usurper would die, and he would _rot_. 


	62. luffy + worthless

The guy who isn’t Sanji’s dad yells a lot of stuff after them as they sail away, and Luffy’s not really sure he gets it. All the stuff he’s saying, about Sanji being soft-hearted and prideless and _good_ \- 

Does he think Luffy doesn’t already _know_ that?

Luffy met Sanji kneeling, setting a plate of free food in front of a starving man, and Luffy isn’t a hero, not really, but he does like them. He’d decided there and then, leaning over a railing and certainty rising like the sun in his chest, that Sanji was going to be his cook and that nobody else would do. That’s why he’s _here_.

So- Luffy doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get why the guy who isn’t Sanji’s dad is bringing all that up _now_ , when he’s just _seen_ everything good about Sanji for himself, hasn’t he? Wasn’t he paying attention at the wedding at all? And he definitely doesn’t get why he sounds so _angry_ about it, like Sanji’s kindness and fire and the look in his eyes whenever he sets food out to feed their crew isn’t the best and brightest thing about him. 

But he does recognize the look the words put on Sanji’s face, the same awful hopeless kind of expression he’d had when they’d reunited on the battlefields, and in that terrible moment where he’d turned away. The kind of look Robin had had, once; the kind of look Ace had had, once. 

It’s a look that says _wretched-unworthy- **worthless**_ , and Luffy _hates_ it. 

He’s glad they’re leaving, he thinks, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with Big Mom and all her fire and fury and death. 

He doesn’t want to see that look on Sanji’s face ever again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> luffy's pov is so stupidly hard to write. _shakes him_ what is happening in your head


	63. oden + time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers yet again!! also i think this is one of my favorite ficlets i've written yet

“Hey,” Oden said, staring up at the starry night sky, lying flat on his back as the deck of the Oro Jackson rocked gently beneath him. There was no response- he took another long drink of sake from the bottle in his hand, then tried again. “Hey, Roger.” 

“Whassit?” Roger’s voice answered from somewhere off to his right, slurred and somewhat quieter than he would have expected. Roger was never quiet, and especially not when drunk. 

Oden tipped his head to the side to look, and the reason was immediately obvious- Akatarou was sprawled fast asleep across Roger’s stomach, and his captain was very carefully not moving from his spot, half-propped against the railing. 

“Just thinking,” Oden said, grinning briefly before turning back to stare up at the sky. The stars were endless, here in the middle of the ocean, bright and endless and ancient. They reminded him of the poneglyphs, in some odd way. Something about the permanence, he thought. “D’you think we were born in the wrong time?” 

Roger was quiet for a moment, then, “You’re thinking about Laugh Tale?” 

“Guess so,” Oden said. “Would’ve liked to be there for it, is all.” 

“You might, yet,” Roger pointed out. 

Oden laughed, loud in the quiet night. “You think I’ll make it that long? It’s a miracle nobody’s murdered me yet!” 

“Hey, you never know!” Roger said, and even without looking Oden could hear him smiling. “Maybe you’ll live to be a hundred.” 

“ _Seas_ , I hope not,” Oden said. “I’d probably be worse than Rayleigh as an old man.” 

“Rayleigh’s only a year older than me, you know.” 

“Rayleigh’s been an old man since he was _twenty_ ,” Oden complained, which immediately sent Roger into a laughing jag. Someone elsewhere on the deck mumbled irritably for them to shut up, and they quieted for a few moments until the complainer had probably fallen back asleep. 

“Anyway,” Oden said, quieter this time.

“Time.” 

“Yeah. It doesn’t bother you?” 

Roger hummed for a moment, lacing his fingers behind his head and looking up at the night sky. “No. ‘m happy with what I got. And I’m not done yet, you know. I’ve still got at least one more show for the world, and it’ll be the greatest one of all.” 

Oden grinned. Roger always had been a man after his own heart.

“What’s it matter when you _live_ ,” Roger said, “if you’re remembered forever?” 

The sky was bright with stars, the ocean quiet around them as the ship slept, and Roger was smiling. “I think,” he said, “we’re exactly when we’re supposed to be.” 


	64. reiju + travels

It’s a strange feeling, to be free without being free. 

Reiju could travel anywhere she wished, if she so chose. Anywhere in the Grand Line; any one of the four Blues. She has the ability, the wealth, the strength to defend herself, and the lead around her neck is long enough that she rarely, if ever, ranges far enough for it to tug. 

But it is there. 

She has more freedom than her brothers are allotted, if only because she is both valued less, and better-equipped to survive on her own. Father likes to keep his more precious toys closer. She enjoys what liberty she’s given, but does not treasure it. It’s foolish, she’s learned, to treasure what can be taken from you. 

(Is it freedom at all, if you only have it because you are so allowed?)

This is her first truly unplanned excursion in years, no permission asked nor given, and the thrill of it makes her wonder if this is the appeal of setting out to sea. Her father would be displeased to see her here, Sanji even more so, but, well. Reiju has always sought to understand what she cannot, and at the moment there is nothing else that more begs her curiosity.

The Baratie is _bustling_ with business.

She tells the loud cook at the door she’ll take a table for one, please. He squints at her for a moment, assessing, and she wonders if he sees the family resemblance. There’s something delightful, she finds, about that thought- the thought of being recognized not as a Vinsmoke or as a princess, but as Sanji’s sister.

It passes, after a moment, replaced by one of the biggest and most plastic customer-service grins she’s ever seen, and she bites back a laugh as she’s ushered inside to take a seat. 

The restaurant is crowded and noisy, full of light and life, and the air is heavy with the smell of frying meat and cooking stew. The Strawhats’ wanted posters are hanging on the wall, she notices with no little amusement, lined neatly up in a place of pride. There’s laughter, and conversation, and the din of what sounds suspiciously like a brawl coming from the heavily-trafficked doors to the kitchen.

She loves it more than she thinks she’s ever loved any place, for all her travels have taken her to every corner of the world. It’s as different as it could possibly be from the stark stone walls and empty silences of the Germa Kingdom. 

A good home, she thinks, as a waiter hurries up to her to ask her order and she smiles and tells him _chef’s choice_. A good home for her little brother.


	65. shirahoshi + determination

The way Shirahoshi learns determination is this: 

Her mother is crying. 

This, in itself, isn’t an uncommon event. Queen Otohime is soft-hearted to a fault, and feels so strongly it seems to shake her fragile frame. She smiles easily and cries even easier. It’s rare a day passes she doesn’t shed a tear, be it in delight or grief or anger or all of the above. 

But, Shirahoshi thinks, four years old and silhouetted in the doorway of her parents’ bedroom with a question dying on her tongue, this time is different. 

Her mother is curled in the corner, tail pulled close around herself and her face buried in the folds of her gown, and her shoulders are shaking soundlessly. She’s making little gasping noises, like she’s crying too hard to breathe. 

Shirahoshi is frozen in silence for a long moment before she gathers the courage to ask, hesitantly, “…Mother?” 

Her mother’s crying hitches, and she lifts her head after a moment. Her face is red and blotchy, and she’s sniffling, but something lights in her eyes when she sees Shirahoshi in the doorway. “Shirahoshi? …Come here.” 

Shirahoshi does, crossing the room and curling up against the wall beside her mother. Her mother leans into her side, warm and reassuring despite her small stature, wrapping her hand around one of Shirahoshi’s fingers. For a long moment, they don’t say anything at all. 

“Mother?” Shirahoshi asks tentatively, her voice sounding far too small for her. “…Why do you keep doing this?” 

Her mother looks up, hair matted and eyes red, and gives her a teary smile. “Because I have to, treasure.” 

“But…” she trails off, flounders for a moment. “…you’re _hurting_ yourself.” 

Her mother laughs, soft and watery, rubbing at her red eyes with a flowing sleeve. “You’re so kind, Shirahoshi. You’ll be a wonderful leader, someday,” she says. “Sometimes we have to do things that are hard, things that are scary, things that hurt. Sometimes there’s nothing else we can do.” 

Her mother smiles then, radiantly bright, and Shirahoshi will never, ever forget the _light_ of it. “That’s the only way we’ll ever reach the sun.” 

(The Noah is plummeting towards Fishman Island, a crumbling titan of ancient wood, massive enough to kill the island in its entirety, and Shirahoshi looks at it, and thinks:

 _Sometimes we have to do things that are hard._ )


	66. merry + defiance

“You won’t hold together long out there,” Iceburg tells her with all the certainty of a master of his trade, half-shouting to be heard over the roar of the wind and waves. “This is the worst Agua Laguna we’ve seen in decades.” 

There’s pain in his voice, from the still-fresh bullet wounds in his chest and from the helplessness of not being able to do more, and it resonates with her, in her broken mast and fractured keel. What a pair they make, the two of them, two damaged things fighting just to stay afloat.

She smiles. It’s no different from her usual expression, but she thinks he understands anyways. These two are different, she thinks, him and his brother. She can tell, from the way they talk to her and about her. They understand ships, and family, and love. She can trust them to make sure her crew will have a home, after she’s gone.

He tells her she won’t survive the return trip, held together by splinters and spite and willpower as she is. He tells her he isn’t even sure she’ll survive leaving port for the open ocean.

But before she’s anything else, Merry is a Strawhat Pirate. 

They’ve always been good at defying the odds.


	67. killer + loyalty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't actually know if this is still wano manga spoilers cause i dont watch the anime but i think it is

“You’re a fucking moron,” Kidd says. 

Killer doesn’t say anything. Partly because it’s true (not that Kidd has any room to talk); partly because he can tell Kidd’s not finished, and he’s been witness to enough of his captain’s bursts of anger to know that there’s nothing to be said or done to stop them other than letting them run their course. 

There’s also the issue that he’s not sure he _can_ open his mouth to say _anything_ without laughing, right now, but. He doesn’t have to think about that, just yet, so he doesn’t. He just follows his captain, to the right and a half-step back like he always has, because that at least is still just the same as it’s always been, and there’s a comfort in familiarity. 

“Absolute _fucking_ moron,” Kidd says again, and the seething fury in his voice this time is so intense Killer might have taken a step back if he’d thought it were actually directed at him. “Did you know? What it was?” 

He did. Orochi had been downright _gleeful_ in explaining it to him, in the hopes that he’d get to see all of Killer’s conflict and anguish, or whatever. Stupid of the snake, really. As though he ever would have made any other choice. 

“I bet you did,” Kidd guesses, correctly, because he’s known Killer just as long as Killer’s known him, and they both know there’s only one reason that he’d ever eat a Devil Fruit. “Bet you still didn’t even hesitate. God. _Fuck!_ ” 

He kicks bad-temperedly at the ground with enough force and Haki to create a minor crater in the path, which Killer neatly sidesteps without breaking stride. Kidd would probably go off all over again if Killer told him his temper tantrum was comforting beyond words, but it’s true. Comfort in familiarity. 

“…You shouldn’t have done it,” Kidd says finally, and he doesn’t sound murderous anymore so much as he just sounds exhausted. 

“I’d do it again,” Killer says, speaking for the first time in the one-sided conversation, the first time since wrestling himself back under control somewhere outside of Udon. He doesn’t even laugh, which is nice. 

Kidd glowers at him, and socks him in the arm hard enough to bruise, but Killer knows he could hit much harder if he really wanted to, so all it really does is make his painted-on smile turn a little more real. “ _Fuck_ you,” Kidd says. “You’re the worst.”

Killer just hums. He’s not sorry. They both know it. 

“We could’ve both _died_ back there, you know, _asshole_ ,” Kidd seethes, like Killer’s throat isn’t still hoarse from choking up water between jags of ragged laughter. “And then it would’ve all been for nothing anyways.” 

“We owe Strawhat a favor, then,” Killer says, mostly because he knows it’ll piss Kidd off, and also because it’s true. 

Sure enough, it sets Kidd off all over again, starting in on how absolutely fucking terrible it was having to put up with Strawhat for days on end and how he’s definitely going to kill him next time he sees him, but the pressure in the air that’s been hanging between them all the way from Udon is finally easing, and Killer can breathe again. 

He’s still gotta keep a handle on the laughing thing, but Kidd’s alive, and they’re free, like pirates should be. 

Killer counts it a small price to pay, all things considered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've never written killer or kidd before but. i love them


	68. ace + desire

It’s funny, really.

Ace has been dreaming of this day for years and years. Ever since he first looked out at the endless horizon; ever since he heard his first pirate stories, he’s dreamed of the day he’d set out to sea, make his own name and his own path, leave his father’s legacy in the dust. 

But right now, with Luffy’s arms tangled tight around him and Luffy’s face buried in his chest and Luffy’s shoulders shuddering with the effort of not crying, he all of a sudden fiercely and desperately just wants to _stay_. 

He can’t, he knows, and he won’t. He can’t break his promise now. 

But- 

“Luffy,” he says. “Hey.” 

“M’not crying,” Luffy mumbles without looking up, and Ace laughs, scrubbing a hand through his little brother’s hair. 

“Luffy, you gotta let go,” he tells him, but there’s a grin on his face he can’t fight off. Luffy sniffles one more time, then finally lets go and steps back, beaming at him with a sunbright smile. 

-but _fuck_ , he’s gonna _miss_ this kid. 

“Have lots of good adventures, Ace!” Luffy says. He’s bouncing on his toes a little, like he physically can’t wait the three years before it’s time to set off himself- and knowing him, he probably can’t. 

“Course I will,” Ace says. “Don’t get your dumb ass into _too_ much trouble without me.” 

Luffy just laughs, and Ace waves over his shoulder as he turns away. 

(Neither of them ever say goodbye.) 

The boat is bobbing in the waves at the base of the little cliff. Makino and Dadan and the bandits are there to see him off, too, but he’s already said his goodbyes to them, so all that’s left to do is jump down, past the final point of no return. The boards rock under his weight when he lands, kicking up a spray of seawater that kisses his face. 

It’s been a long time since he was really alone. He already feels colder, but there’s nothing to be done about it now, so he turns to face the horizon instead. 

It’s a big world out there. He hopes he finds what he’s looking for. 

(All children want to be loved, and Portgas D. Ace never was an exception, no matter how he might have tried his hardest to be one.)

(It’s a shame he didn’t figure that out sooner.)


	69. vivi + longing

The crow’s nest is, perhaps, Vivi’s favorite place on the Going Merry. It offers an easy escape from the crew’s noise and chaos (and much as she loves them, sometimes an escape is sorely needed); and, more importantly, it has by far the best view of the horizon.

Vivi… spends a lot of time watching the horizon. Alabasta is somewhere just beyond, and one of these days when she goes to look out over the water she’ll _see_ it, emerging golden and glittering from the depths, and she’ll know she’s almost home.

Right now, though, the horizon is a flat blue line, unmarked by so much as a single shadow or silhouette, and home feels so very far away.

Her eyes well up all at once before she can even think to try and stop them, and she folds in on herself, letting the railing take all her weight as she buries her face in her hands and lets herself cry.

She loves the crew- _her_ crew- and all the fascinating islands and wonderful adventures they’ve shown her more than words can say. She loves them so much it _hurts_ , but no matter how much she loves them she’ll always love her country more, and right now her country is dying and far away and her heart is so very _heavy_ with longing.

She wants to go _home_.

“Vivi?” someone asks, and she flinches a little in surprise, glancing around, scrubbing at her teary eyes with a hand. It’s Nami, stepping off the ladder and into the crow’s nest, brow furrowed with concern. “I came to get you for lunch… are you okay?”

Vivi tries for a smile. “I’m fine,” she says, but even she can tell it’s not convincing.

A frown flickers across Nami’s face, and she moves to the railing to stand beside Vivi, brushing their shoulders together and following her line of sight to the empty horizon. “We’ll get you there,” she says, with the ring of a promise, and it’s not the first or fifth or tenth time she’s said it, but it makes the pressure in Vivi’s chest ease all the same.

“I know,” Vivi says, because she _does_. There’s no doubt in her mind that her crew would forge on through hell and high water to get her home. “I just… wish I could see it. That’s all.”

It’s been two years since she was home. Sometimes she worries about how much she’s forgotten.

Nami is quiet for a moment, and then she passes something over to Vivi. Vivi takes it without thinking, feeling worn wood and glass against her fingers, and looks down.

It’s the Eternal Pose. _Alabasta_ , the little metal plaque promises in small, scratchy letters. The needle is pointing straight ahead, steady and unwavering, towards the unchanging horizon.

They’re right on course.

Vivi smiles, watery but true, and it feels real this time, even though the tears are welling up again. Nami squeezes her shoulder. “Come on,” she says, gentle. “Let’s go get lunch.”

Vivi wipes her eyes with a sleeve, hugs the Eternal Pose to her heart. “Okay.”

* * *

The rain returns to Alabasta, and the pirates leave, and all is well.

Vivi leans against the rail of her bedroom balcony, in the castle she grew up in, amidst the sands of the mother country she bled and cried and would have died for, and looks at the horizon.

She wants to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nice


	70. otohime + naiveté

The holding cell is pleasant, compared to many; well-lit and spacious, despite the bars over the windows and the entrance. But it is still, inescapably, a cell, and the sunlight that shines in is as false as any that reaches them here on the bottom of the ocean.

The irony is not lost on Otohime. 

“Please, Otohime,” Neptune says. “How long are you going to keep doing this? This is the third time in three weeks.” 

“As long as it takes,” Otohime tells him, staring at the wall opposite her rather than look at him, “for you to listen to me. Your Majesty.” 

He makes a frustrated noise, muffled slightly- she presumes he’s buried his face in his hands. “It’s not that I don’t agree with your ideals,” he says after a long moment. “Your dream is wonderful, but it’s just that. A _dream_. You need to stop being so naive!” 

She finally turns to look at him, frowning. “Don’t mistake hope for naiveté,” she says softly. “Your majesty.” 

The words hang in the air like sunlight for a long moment. She holds her head high, defiant, and meets his eyes unflinching. 

He looks away first. 

She watches him as he unlocks the door to her holding cell, his head and shoulders bowed under the weight of her gaze. He looks small, like this, for all that he physically towers over her. 

He holds the door open, and she steps out without looking at him. She’s halfway to the door when he calls after her.

“What will it take for you to call me by my name?” 

She raises an eyebrow without looking around. “You could stop arresting me.” 

“You could stop disturbing the peace.” 

(They both know she can’t.)

“I’ll see you next week,” she says. “Your majesty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm constantly thinking about how otohime was apparently a firebrand activist before becoming queen


	71. bon clay + depths

Bentham really cannot abide boring people. 

It’s one of the reasons they’d joined Baroque Works in the first place. The organization had been secrets from the ground up, layers and layers of intrigue and mystery and filled to the brim with interesting and colorful characters. And most intriguing of all had been their illustrious boss, only narrowly beating out the equally enigmatic Miss All Sunday. 

So of course they’d been _fascinated_. Layers on layers of hidden names, hidden skills, hidden dreams. Bentham likes people with _depth_ more than anything, and many of Baroque Works’ former officer-agents had had a surprising amount of it. 

(Barring Mr. 1, of course, who was an absolutely hideous bore without a single personality trait to speak of, but the less time wasted on _him_ the better, in Bentham’s _humble_ opinion.) 

Bentham likes people who are not what they appear, but they like people who are all that they appear _and more_ even better. 

There’s a reason, after all, that they like the Strawhat Pirates so much.


	72. robin + stars

Robin doesn’t have anywhere to sleep, tonight; but she’s used to vagrancy, and besides, the night is warm and dry. It could be much worse. She tucks herself into the corner of an alleyway against a pile of empty wheat sacks, and looks up between the buildings at the starry sky. 

It’s her thirteenth birthday. 

Her birthdays have never been particularly lavish affairs. She likes to think her mother had celebrated it with her, but she can’t remember far enough back to say for certain. Her aunt certainly never had- she’d never even asked what it was, let alone done anything to mark the occasion. 

But the scholars had always had a cupcake with chocolate frosting and too many candles, and a couple new books chosen just for her, and- 

She sniffles, and swipes at her eyes. 

She thought she’d be used to being alone by now. 

The stars are glittering above, and she tilts her head back to stare up at them rather than let old memories weigh around her neck and choke her. Her hair is short right now, haphazardly cut with scissors to disguise the resemblance to her wanted poster, and the ends poke at her neck. 

She doesn’t know what this island is named. She’ll probably be gone within another week or two, and once she has she’ll probably never come back. She always has to keep moving, or people get suspicious, people get curious, people talk to the marines. She rarely has time to rest. 

But right now… 

Right now it’s her birthday, and she can see the same constellations she used to see from Ohara. 

Astronomy was never her favorite subject, but she’d drank the information in with the same hungry devotion she did everything else, and there had always been something appealing about the stars, so distant and bright, about the stories their arrangements and constellations held. 

She’s glad she did, now. She remembers reading about how different islands all told their own stories about the stars, every culture drawing their own pictures in the same sky. 

She might be the only person left who remembers the constellations of Ohara. 

The first one she finds is the first one she always finds- the Throne of the Gods. Three stars in an L-shape forming the back and seat of the heavenly chair, with a tight cluster of four more beneath for the legs. 

She traces her finger left and up from there, closing one eye to focus, until she finds the end of the World Serpent’s twisting tail, following its body up as it spirals across the sky. And there, just at the end of the World Serpent’s snout, is the Polestar. 

She used to sit in the branches of the Tree of Knowledge, as close to the heavens as she could get, and trace these same shapes. The leaves that used to rustle around her ears in the night wind are nothing but ashes, now. 

At least the stars haven’t changed. 

At least she still has that.


	73. pedro + life

Pedro comes home short an eye, a crew, and fifty years of life, and he knows he won’t get away without explaining the first two, but he’s hopeful he can talk around the latter enough that nobody gets too worried about him. 

He should’ve known better, really. 

He’s barely been home a week when Wanda tugs him aside to say, “Did you hurt one of your legs?” 

He stares at her one-eyed, baffled for a moment. “What?” 

“You’re walking different,” she says, and it’s really not fair how perceptive she is sometimes, how many things she notices, especially considering her vision is so much worse than his. “Not too different, so I didn’t notice at first, but I’m sure now. It looks like something’s hurting, and I’ll _drag_ you to the doctor if I have to, Pedro.”

“I’m… not hurt,” Pedro says carefully.

“Well, then _why_ -“ 

“It’s arthritis,” he says before he can think better of it, and then immediately winces. 

She blinks. “…Sorry, what?” 

There’s no way out of this without explaining, now, so he sighs and looks away. “Arthritis. Old age onset,” he says, stubbornly not meeting her gaze as the bafflement on her face slowly begins to give way to dawning horror. 

It’s a well-known fact, in the New World, what Big Mom’s Devil Fruit does to people, and Wanda is smart. She doesn’t have any trouble putting the pieces together. 

“...How many years?” she asks, her voice shaking a little, with anger or fear or both. He doesn’t answer, not right away. “ _Pedro._ ” 

She grabs the front of his shirt with both hands and drags him roughly down to eye-level with her. He lets her. “Pedro, _how many years did you lose?_ ” 

“Fifty,” he tells her, and she reels back like she’s been slapped, letting go of him all at once and taking a stumbling step back. 

(She’s only four years younger than him, or she’s supposed to be.) 

He can see her doing the math in her head, reaching the number he’s been trying very hard not to think about. “But- _Pedro_ , that’s...” 

_That’s most of your life._

“It’s fine,” he says, even if it’s not and never will be, because there’s nothing he or anybody could have done to stop it aside from never going to Tottoland in the first place, and at least he’s still _alive_ , unlike- “It was almost sixty.” 

“It is _not fine!_ ” she snaps. He can see tears gathering in her eyes as she glares at him, struggling to blink them back, and it’s so much worse than all the fury she could level at him. “ _Pedro!_ ” 

“It’s fine,” he says again, quieter, because there’s nothing else he _can_ say. 

She makes a sobbing, hiccuping kind of noise, and then she’s hugging him all at once, burying her face in his chest and tangling her fists in the back of his shirt like if she just holds on tight enough he won’t die before she does. He hugs her back just as hard, rubbing her back as she sobs into his chest. 

At least he has a couple more years of life, yet.

He hopes she’ll be okay, after. 


	74. hyogorou + promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers again i think

There’s a crash and a shout and a cloud of debris, and a boy who cannot _possibly_ be Kouzuki Momonosuke dashes into the prison. 

Hyogorou is old, now, and worn and broken and so much smaller than he was once, and his hands shake more than they should, especially on cold or rainy days. But his mind is as sharp as ever, and he has always had an excellent memory for faces. 

The boy stumbles to a halt, slowly turns to face the prisoners, and Hyogorou _knows_. 

Toki had brought her children to meet him, not long after she’d arrived in Wano and recovered from her illness. Momonosuke was only three or four, then, just begun walking, clinging tight to the hem of his mother’s kimono, and Hiyori even younger. 

She’d rested a hand on Momonosuke’s head and introduced him with the proudest smile Hyogorou had ever seen as _Oden’s son, future shougun of Wano_ , and the boy had shuffled his feet a little and hidden behind her leg, a wide-eyed and frightened look on his face. 

Hyogorou had chuckled, a little, and knelt before him. 

The boy who cannot possibly be Kouzuki Momonosuke but _is_ is standing before him now, that same wide-eyed look on his face, and then as now, Hyogorou kneels. 

He looks at the other prisoners, and he sees the spark the moment it lights, in the moment just before they all follow him to their knees before their liege: 

The promise of a future, fragile and frightened but _there_ , kindling back to life in their eyes.


	75. kyros + loss

He always brings her flowers. 

Redundant, perhaps, when she rests forever in a field of them, her grave forever golden, crowned and adorned with sunflowers, but-

She’d always loved it, when he brought her flowers, and he wishes now he’d done it more. Wishes he’d taken the time to savor her smile, her surprised giggle, the way her fingers had tightened around the stems just gentle enough not to hurt them. He wishes a lot of things. 

He sits down in front of the rough wooden marker, clears the fallen petals away from her grave with gentle hands, and sets the fresh flowers down soft. 

For a moment he just sits, and breathes. 

Oftentimes Rebecca comes with him, on these visits, but sometimes he likes to come alone. There’s something peaceful about just sitting with her, sitting with the grief and loss until it softens into something he can carry again. 

“Good morning, Scarlet,” he tells her, and smiles, soft with memory.

He was always an earlier riser than her; old habit from days when he had to be up with the sun. There had been many days he had to shake her awake, as she buried her head in the pillows to block out the world. A few times he’d recruited Rebecca to the cause, plopped her on the bed and set her to tickling her mother awake. 

He hopes she’s sleeping well, now. 

“We’ll be leaving for the Reverie, soon,” he tells her. “So I won’t be able to visit for awhile. Viola is nervous, I think, though she’s trying not to show it. Rebecca’s terribly excited.” He smiles. “You’d be proud of both of them, I know.” 

The ache of loss has never gone away, not really, and he knows it never will. But it’s these quiet moments with her memory, and the echo of her in Rebecca’s face every time she smiles, that make it easier to bear. 

“Rest easy,” he tells her. “We’ll be alright.”


	76. orochi + fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not actually wano spoilers BUT much more fun if you're aware of certain things

They call him a coward, he knows. They snicker and murmur behind his back- _Lord Orochi’s scared of ghosts, Lord Orochi jumps at shadows, the phantoms of the Kouzuki will chase Lord Orochi into an early grave_ \- even while they kneel and praise him to his face. 

Well, he doesn’t care. 

“It doesn’t matter, you know.” He gulps down a flagon of sake, lets the heat of it in the back of his throat burn the bitter frustration away. “I don’t _care_ how the fools disparage me. I’m right. I know I’m right,” he says, jabbing a finger in Kyoshirou’s face. 

Kyoshirou doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but Orochi can see from his face that he wants to. “Right, my lord,” he drawls. “The ghosts.” 

“They _will_ return!” Orochi snarls, before a thought occurs, bright and appealing through the haze of alcohol. “And- and when they do, and when they’re beaten, I’ll hoist them up on crosses for the whole country to see! Then they’ll _know_ I was right. They won’t be mocking me _then_.” 

“Surely,” Kyoshirou agrees, voice flat. 

Orochi barely hears him, snatching another flagon from the table and taking a long drink directly from the mouth. Whenever the topic of the Kouzuki comes up, it always seems like he can’t drink enough to settle the needles under his skin. “They can laugh at me all they like, so long as they always remember to _fear_ me. Fear is _power_ , Kyoshirou. You and I have power over this pathetic country _because_ we are _feared_.” 

“If that’s the case, my lord,” Kyoshirou says slyly, “couldn’t it also be said that the Kouzuki have power over you?” 

Orochi scowls, running his own words back through his mind for a moment, and then snarls and hurls the flagon at Kyoshirou’s head. The yakuza ducks it, tumbling backwards and laughing maniacally all the way to the floor. 

“ _Shut up!_ ”


	77. onimaru + trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers again, i think? i have lost track of where the anime is completely

Every child knows you don’t _trust_ kitsune. Kitsune are liars and cheats, not always malicious but always unpredictable, unreliable, sly, and above all _untrustworthy_. 

You can ask a kitsune to do something, and if they’re in a benevolent mood perhaps they’ll even do it. Or perhaps they won’t; perhaps they’ll laugh, perhaps they’ll do just the opposite, perhaps they’ll simply vanish. Kitsune are creatures of passion and whim, chasing no one’s desires but their own, nothing but their own gratification.

And yet. 

Onimaru finishes wiping the blood and snow from yet another stolen sword and hangs it on the wall beside the last. The blade gleams softly in the dim light of the underground room, and he raises a careful hand to run his thumb down the smooth, glassy length of metal. 

There is nothing fun about this work, nothing gratifying or fast. It’s slow, tedious labor towards an uncertain end that he isn’t even sure will ever come. The weapons pile higher, higher, higher, and with each blade added to the store he has to wonder whether this is _for_ anything at all. 

But there is something rewarding about it nonetheless, and the thought of _stopping_ , of abandoning his labors and wandering off for greener pastures and greater fun as others of his kind no doubt would, never even really crosses his mind. 

He steps back, surveys the room with satisfaction, and then lets himself fall and fold into his natural shape, smaller and more comfortable and flickering with flame, and curls up in a corner to sleep. 

Kitsune are not trustworthy, by their very nature. 

But for some reason he can’t begin to identify, he wants to be.


	78. toko + tears

Toko nearly drowned, once. 

It happened only a week or two after the strange fruits appeared in the trash and the whole town started smiling real big. She hadn’t understood yet, not then, not really. All she’d known was that all of a sudden everybody was _happy_ , everybody was laughing even when the jokes weren’t really that funny, and that was better, right?

She’d gone out just before dawn, down by the river that wound slow and sluggish and toxic around the town, to search the riverside dump for any hidden treasures thrown out the night before. The early hours of morning were always the best times to look, before anyone or anything else could pick the piles over. And sometimes, if she got lucky, she could find a surprise for her dad!

The shore was littered with garbage and rot. She was careful, as careful as a clumsy child could be. 

Not quite careful enough. 

Her foot caught on something slick, hidden by the early morning dim. She slipped down the short, rocky slope and hit the water, and all at once her body turned to _lead_. 

The water wrapped around her, tugging and yanking on the sleeves and hem of her yukata, dragging her down, and she tried to paddle against it but her arms refused to obey, gone dead and numb. The river ran shallow enough that she could have found her rooting against the riverbed if only she could move her legs, but she _couldn’t_ \- 

And she couldn’t stop _laughing_. 

The poison water flooded her mouth, and even as she choked on it she was laughing, the sound high and ragged from terror and lack of breath, tears welling up in her eyes and running down her cheeks into the mouth she couldn’t seem to close. She tasted salt and rust as she gasped and choked, water running down her throat. 

It wasn’t _funny_ it was _scary_ it was _so scary_ why couldn’t she stop _laughing_ -

A hand closed around hers, worn and warm against the dragging, numbing force of the river, and she clung to it with all the meagre strength she had as she was pulled to shore. 

As soon as her body was dragged out of the river, she felt the life start to seep back into her limbs, but still didn’t have the strength to do anything other than lie shaking on the ground. She pressed her hands against her mouth, against the smile that still refused to go away. 

There was laughter trembling up her throat again but she didn’t _want_ to _laugh,_ she wanted to cry and scream until her dad came to hug her and hold her and wipe away the tears running down her cheeks and tell her it was all going to be okay. She just wanted to _cry_ -

Somebody she didn’t know picked her up, held her close, rubbing a hand against her back. 

Toko _laughed_. 


	79. denjirou + patience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only a little bit of wano spoilers in this one!

“Patience is a virtue, you know,” Denjirou said, grinning too wide for the scolding note in his voice to be convincing. “A mark of a true samurai.” 

“Shut _up_!” Kin’emon hissed under his breath. “Are you gonna help me or not?” 

“Of course I am,” Denjirou said. “I just think it’s really, really funny you nearly got yourself killed just because you couldn’t _sit still_ until they stopped looking for you-“ 

“I _really had to go_ -“ 

“Maybe you should’ve thought of that _before_ you _robbed the boss of the yakuza,_ Kin!”

“I wasn’t _planning_ on it! He just had his purse right there on his belt and I haven’t eaten in two days, he was basically _asking_ me to-“ 

A commotion rapidly approaching down the street caught Denjirou’s attention, and he hastily clapped one hand over his friend’s mouth and used the other to shove his head down out of view of the window they were peering out of. A moment later, a trio of yakuza emerged from the crowd, squinting around, clearly looking for someone.

Kin’emon, to his credit (what little there was of it), went silent and still immediately as the yakuza passed. One of them, glancing to the side, caught Denjirou’s eyes. “Hey, kid, you seen a thug carrying a big coin purse come through here?” 

Denjirou tipped his head to one side, faux-thoughtful. “A couple minutes ago I saw some idiot with like, really badly bleached hair making for the south edge of town in a real hurry,” he offered. “Might’ve been who you’re looking for?” 

The yakuza nodded brusquely. “That’ll be him. Thanks for the tip,” he said, turning away with a nod at his companions and tossing a silver coin over his shoulder as he left. Denjirou finally took his hand off Kin’emon’s mouth in order to snatch the coin out of the air, pocketing it. 

“Badly bleached?” Kin’emon complained under his breath, rubbing a hand through his hair. 

Denjirou just grinned. “We should probably get out of here before he realizes I lied,” he said. “How about lunch? You owe me for the next week at _least_. On Boss Hyogorou’s dime, obviously.” 

“Only if I never have to hear another _word_ from you about _patience_ , you jackass,” Kin’emon said.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Denjirou said. “Deal.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this prompt wanted to be sad but id just devastated myself with the toko one so i decided to make this one funny and stupid instead and i was very pleased with the result. they're so dumb.


	80. rebecca + time

_Seven!_

The arena is slick with blood, and the crowd is counting down the final moments of the free-for-all, conducted by the announcer through his microphone. Time slips, falls, drags past her eyes, speeding up and slowing down to the offbeat of her heart, to the pumping of adrenaline through her veins. 

_Six!_

Someone swings wildly at her head, and she sees the attack the split-second before it happens, ducks under the blade.

_Five!_

Someone else is coming at her from behind, and she rolls out of the way at the last second, lets him drive his sword into the stomach of her opponent instead. There’s blood, splattering; there’s words, gurgling and broken; there’s time, still bending and shattering around her as she moves to the next moment, the next move not-yet-made. 

_Four!_

She can never-never-never linger on the present, let alone the past. She has to keep her eyes on the future, the next attack, the next opponent, or before she knows it there’s a dagger in her back, an arrow in her throat-

_Three!_

There’s a knife, aimed for her eye, and she jerks her head to the side to dodge it and keeps turning, whipping her foot into the small of her attacker’s back and driving the breath from his lungs, sending him stumbling into the middle of another duel. She doesn’t pause to see the fight collapse into blood and chaos at the sudden interruption- doesn’t have that luxury. 

_Two!_

One final opponent, thrice her size with an axe raised over his shoulder. He aims high so she goes low, sliding between his legs just as he starts to swing, just in the half-second past the point of no return. He realizes she’s gone too late; his own momentum carries him spinning around, tangled in his own cape, and she sees him hit the ground headfirst and hard the moment before he makes impact.

_One!_

The bell sounds, and Rebecca stands alone amongst the wreckage. 

The crowd _screams_ with disappointment and hate, but it’s barely a rattle of background noise behind the thumping in her ears. Time slows back to normal, one second at a time, paced to her heartbeat, smoothing out from fractured, prescient chaos back to linearity. 

She’s won herself another week of life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is another one of my favorite drabbles i've written by far i think


	81. otsuru + alone

The work day is over, the late afternoon sunlight slanting in through the dusty windows she can never quite seem to keep clean against the constant encroachment of the wastelands. The teahouse is silent, and Tsuru is alone. 

Her smile drops, and she sighs, resting her elbows on the table and burying her face in a hand for a brief, indulgent moment. It’s nothing new, the quiet, the loneliness. She’s been bearing it alone for twenty years now, with all the grace and dignity she has. 

That doesn’t mean it’s ever stopped hurting. 

She might miss the noise more than anything. They were always so _loud_ , her husband and Lord Oden and all the others, trailing shouts and laughter behind them whenever they went. It was a rare occasion they managed to leave her house without breaking something, she remembers, fond and sad. Now the silence hangs in the air, unbroken and thick as gathered dust.

She didn’t realize until they were gone how quiet her life would be without them. 

The bell above the door sounds, high and clear, shattering the silence and yanking her out of her reverie, and she startles a little, glancing around. “I’m sorry, we’re-“ she starts, and then her voice stutters and dies in her throat. 

There’s a woman standing in her doorway, long dark hair lit orange by the evening sun and smile gentle as always, and for a fleeting moment Tsuru wonders if she has simply lost her mind. (Lady Toki said, she said, she _said_ -)

“I’m very sorry to disturb you after hours, Otsuru-san,” Kikunojou (impossible, _unmistakeable_ ) says, smiling politely. “But I’ve just come to town, and I heard tell your teahouse was in want of a waitress? My name is Kiku.” 

And Tsuru feels the sun rise in her chest, and feels herself step back over the line from _widow_ to _wife_ , and says, “It’s very nice to meet you, Okiku-chan. Can you start tomorrow?” 


	82. katakuri + conflict

Katakuri is not the sort of person who has ever had to cope with _conflicts of interest_. His loyalties have always been clear, defined, and absolute; to mother, to siblings, to family. That, at least, has always been easy. 

(The closest he’d ever come had been when Lola had vanished, and Mama had _raged_ , and he’d been terrified, for a moment, shaken down to his bones that the loyalty to _family_ he’d built his bedrock on might have to _splinter-_

But they’d never found her. 

He prays they never will.)

He’s loyal above all else and always has been, and yet- 

“Everyone else will be expecting you to be disappointed not to go to Wano. They all still think you should be out for Strawhat’s blood,” Brulée says crossly. “You could at least _pretend_ not to be relieved.” 

“I’m not sure I could,” he admits, entirely honest. “Besides, how do you know I’m not simply relieved to have the defense of Tottoland left to me?” 

She rolls her eyes. “Because I know _you,_ ” she says. She’s right, of course, as usual; she’s always been able to read him in a way he allows few others to. “You know you’re probably going to have to fight him again eventually, right?” 

_Only if he doesn’t win in Wano_ , he doesn’t say, because that would be treasonous even for him. He shrugs instead. For once, the future is something he can’t begin to plan for, can’t even guess, and there’s a relief in that, instead of the helplessness he’s always feared. 

“We’ll see,” is all he says.


	83. hiyori + shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers!! again!

If there’s one thing Hiyori regrets, it’s that she never knew Wano in its greatest glory. 

She and her brother were born on a ship, lived their earliest and happiest years at sea, and never know a life on land until their mother brought them home. And at that time, though she’d been too young to understand it yet, Wano had already begun to crumble and decay beneath Orochi’s hands like so many wilting flowers. 

The Wano of now is an echo of an echo, and she _knows_ , from Kawamatsu and Denjirou and what she remembers of her mother’s tales, just how pale a shadow it is of what it once was. The light and luxury of the Flower Capital is nothing but a veil, layers and layers of makeup that can’t quite manage to hide the rotting sickness of the face beneath no matter how thickly it’s painted on. 

It’s a glorious illusion, to be sure, but Hiyori knows masks when she sees them. 

It seems like the shadows deepen by the day, as Orochi grows more vindictive, more paranoid, more insane; as the wastelands crack beneath the blazing sun and the poison seeps its way into the ground to kill what plants survive at their roots; as the people starve to death laughing. 

Only the faintest of sparks remain, adrift amidst the darkness, and as her hands tremble ever more against the strings of her shamisen, as the rage behind Denjirou’s eyes darkens every time she sees him, she knows even they cannot hold out much longer. 

It’s going to be alright, though. It must be. 

Her mother always used to tell her it would be darkest just before the dawn.


	84. toki + haven

Toki has spent her whole life running. 

(The flames lick at the hem of her kimono, and the smoke claws at her throat as she draws breath to speak. She needs to be strong, now, cannot let her voice break or waver. She needs to be _heard_.)

For years uncountable she has been running, and running, and _running_ as the wild waves of time and currents of fate rage around her, aching feet and burning chest and nothing and nobody to turn to but herself. It’s been a long life, and so very memorable, but also frightening, and purposeless, and above all _lonely_. 

(Grief and ash rest together in her lungs, suffocatingly heavy, but even so she calls out, clarion call, signal of the dawn. The firelight illuminates the faces of the watching many, shocked and grief-stricken, and her heart breaks for them. Her suffering is behind her now, but theirs is all yet to come.) 

And at long, long last, she’s found a place she wants to stay. 

Her husband is dead, her children sent away, and the only haven against the storm she’s ever found is burning at her back.

She smiles, and burns with it. 


	85. carrot + moon

“I only want you to look up for a second,” Pedro said, hands gentle around her wrists. “Just a second, then right back down to me, alright?”

“Mhm,” Carrot agreed, hands pressed over her eyes. Excitement jittered through her veins, and she bounced slightly on her toes. There was something in the air tonight, something new and different, something thrilling that made her fur stand on end and her fingers fidget. 

(She’d always had to stay inside during the full moons, before.)

“Alright,” he said, and squeezed her hands once, reassuring, before letting go and stepping back. 

She lowered her hands and raised her head to the night sky, and the full moon swallowed her mind. 

It was _lightning_ and _life_ , white fire pounding into her chest and pulsing through her lungs, so much _more_ than anything she’d ever experienced, anything she’d ever even imagined. The world dropped away, and it was only her and the moonlight, filling the sky, pouring like molten silver straight through her eyes and into her skull. 

Distantly, she could hear herself screaming, but like everything else it was far-off, distant, unimportant, behind the silver light filling her eyes, sinking into her bones and letting them crack and grow and change like seeds giving forth new life. Her blood was electric in her veins, sizzling and hot and desperate to move-run- _fly_ -

-and then all at once the silver world went dark. 

_-nonono give it back give it back give it back-_

“Shhhh,” somebody was saying, one hand wrapped around her back and holding her close, the other pressed to the back of her head to bury her face against their chest, hiding her eyes from the hungry moon as the euphoric energy bled out of her body. “Shhh, shh. You’re fine. Can you hear me?” 

_…Oh._

Pedro. 

The exhaustion hit at the same moment the awareness did, and a soft sound escaped her as her knees buckled. Pedro caught her easily, scooping her off her feet and hefting her up like she didn’t weigh anything at all. 

For a long moment she just breathed, gasping for oxygen against the ache buried deep in her chest, gathering her breath and her mind back up from where the full moon had scattered both to chaos. 

It was so _much_ -

“You alright?” he asked. She managed a nod against his shoulder, clumsy and slow, and heard his low chuckle in response. 

“It gets easier,” he said, readjusting her in his arms and starting to walk, back towards the village, back home. She listened to the calming rhythm of his footsteps, rocking her just a little with every step, blocking out the humming of the moon on the edges of her awareness. 

He patted the top of her head, gentle. “You did great.” 


	86. oden + wish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano manga spoilers again
> 
> also this one is very short but i couldnt. make it any longer

If you asked Kouzuki Sukiyaki, he would have told you that his son was a man with too many wishes and not enough sense between his ears. A man, he would say, ought to have his feet on the ground rather than his head in the clouds and his eyes on the horizon, especially a man born to rule one day.

His son, on the other hand, would have argued (and did, many times) that it wasn’t that he had too many wishes but that the world wasn’t big enough to hold them all, and that sense and reason were highly overrated anyways. 

And then he set out to sea at long, long last, and learned that the world was big enough for everything he could have ever dreamed and then some. 

(He never did change his mind about sense, but that proved fortunate, in the end. A sensible man never would’ve fit in half so well with the Roger Pirates.)


	87. pudding + perfect

“Do you ever get tired,” Pudding asks, and tries not to flinch from her own words, because something about asking _that_ question to _this_ person would always strike her as wrong no matter how well she came to know him, “of being perfect?” 

He doesn’t answer right away, chewing thoughtfully, and something tightens in her chest as she scrambles to explain herself. “I mean. Not that- ah. Not that you’re…” 

“Yes,” he says simply, and her voice dies in her throat. 

“Oh,” she says weakly after a moment, and stuffs another donut in her mouth to avoid saying anything else. She always used to have such good control over her voice, over her face, over her thoughts. She doesn’t know what happened. 

(That’s a lie. She does.) 

(She used to be better at lying to herself, too.)

“It’s important, I think,” he says after a lengthy stretch of quiet, “to figure out who you really are, when you’re not being perfect. I didn’t get that for awhile, but- well.” _Strawhat_ , he doesn’t say, but she can recognize it, now, in the tilt of his head and the half-rueful twist of his lips around his fangs. 

A lot of things about Katakuri come back around to Strawhat before long, she’s found, and she can’t help but wonder what that says, that a boy he knew for a single day has left so deep an impact against all the decades he’s lived with his family. Can’t help but wonder what it says about her, and the echo of Sanji’s words that won’t stop circling the back of her mind. 

“And,” she says, and _hates_ how small her voice sounds. It’s supposed to only sound like that when she wants it to, when she wants to sound demure and humble and cute, and it’s _never_ supposed to sound like she’s about to shatter in place, and yet- “if I don’t like who that is? Under everything?” 

He hums, thoughtful for a moment, and she’s not sure if she loves or hates how he never says anything he hasn’t decided to mean. “Well,” he says, “somewhere in there is a little sister who bakes me donuts. I like her.” 

Pudding has to swallow twice before she can get air into her lungs again. “Oh,” she says again, quieter. Her head feels like it’s buzzing, but in a good way, a way that leaves her feeling warm instead of steel-and-mirrors cold. 

For some reason, talking with her brother always leaves her a lot to think about. 

He offers her another donut, and she takes it. 


	88. sanji + fear

Sanji doesn’t scare easily, alright. He just doesn’t. 

He had to learn how to be brave and he had to learn it young, because they only ever laughed and kicked him harder when he cried, and because storms and starvation don’t care in the slightest whether you’re young and terrified and small. And now aboard the Baratie, he doesn’t flinch before even the drunkest and angriest of patrons. 

But there’s this _door_. 

It’s just a normal door. It leads from the kitchen down to one of the storage rooms buried below the Baratie’s decks, the one they use to store the flour, mostly. There’s nothing about the room itself that’s special, except for that the hinges on the door that lead down to it are a little rusty, and they squeal and clatter in just the wrong way whenever it’s opened. 

It’s stupid. He _knows_ it is. He’s not a _baby_ anymore, he’s _twelve_ , and he knows full well that he’s in the East Blue, all the way across the world from where he came from, as safe as he’s ever going to be. A rusty door is just a rusty door. There’s probably rusty doors on every island in the seas, and they probably all sound more or less the same. 

It doesn’t matter how stupid it is, though, because regardless of how much he _knows_ where and when he is, whenever that door opens and the hinges shriek just the same as the cell doors used to because they were never oiled properly, terror pours straight into his veins and he is all at once _home_ and unable to think of anything but the certainty that someone is coming to _hurt_ him, and it’s the worst feeling in the world. 

It’s a busy afternoon in the kitchen, noisy and hectic and perfect, and everything is fine. Sanji’s plating freshly-seared salmon filets and piling them on a platter to bring out to the waiting customers, balancing it on one hand while he adjusts a stove dial with the other, because Patty _always_ turns them too high-

The door creaks open.

Sanji _freezes_ , blood turning to icy sludge in his veins as his brain fills up with static, and drops the plate in the middle of the kitchen. He snaps out of it a moment later, scrambles to catch the platter before it can shatter because he can’t just let it _spill_ and go to _waste_ , manages to grab it just in time. 

He’s fine. 

He’s fine he’s fine he’s fine, and he’s safe and free and on the other side of the world, and it’s _just a rusty door_. 

A hand lands on his shoulder, and for all its heaviness it’s gentler than Judge’s ever was, but he still startles so badly that his heart skips a beat. He jerks around, almost drops the platter again, and Zeff plucks it neatly from his grip before it can fall. 

“Kid,” Zeff says, passing the plate off to a passing cook and crouching down as well as he can on his peg leg to meet Sanji at eye level. He’s frowning but he doesn’t look mad, is the only thing Sanji can think, and that’s good because he really doesn’t know what he’d do if Zeff was mad at him. “You good?” 

_I’m fine_ , Sanji tries to say, because he _is_ , but his voice refuses to work. He nods instead, jerky, focuses on the smells and sounds of the kitchen to remind him where and when he is. Zeff’s frown deepens slightly, and he squeezes Sanji’s shoulder.

“Take five,” is all he says. “You’ve been working hard today.” 

And normally Sanji would argue, but his breathing is still too fast and ragged and it’s making his vision go a little funny around the edges, and so he goes.

(When he comes back an hour later, breathing steady and steps careful, Zeff shoves a tureen of soup into his hands without so much as a word of greeting and tells him to double-time it out to the lunch buffet instead of waiting around for it to get cold enough to make ice cubes out of, and everything is okay again.) 

(It’s a week before he notices someone’s started oiling the hinges, and the door doesn’t creak anymore.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this boy can fit so much fucking trauma in him


	89. jinbe + flowers

The island is quiet, small and unpopulated, little more than a long stretch of sandy beach and a small copse of trees, not even large enough to register on the Log Pose, but the view of the sun as it dips slowly down behind the horizon is wonderful. The Sun Pirates are scattered up and down the beach, resting and chatting and fishing.

Jinbe is sitting against a palm tree, eyes closed and hands folded behind his head, half-drowsing. The sand is soft and warm; somewhere upwind, Hachi is grilling squid for takoyaki, and the smell is delicious. It’s the most content he’s been in quite awhile, he thinks. 

“Um…” a voice says, so small and soft he almost misses it, and he blinks an eye open. 

Koala is standing at his side, fidgeting in place like she’s forcing herself not to turn and flee, hands behind her back. Like always, she can’t seem to make herself meet his eyes, staring down at a patch of sand beside her shoe instead. There are grass stains on her skirt, he notices.

She doesn’t seem inclined to say anything else, so Jinbe gentles his voice as much as he can to prompt her. “Koala?” 

Wordlessly, she pulls a fistful of flowers from behind her back, and offers him one. They’re clearly fresh-picked, stems a little bent and still smudgy with dirt, each one crowned by a clean white halo of petals surrounding a sunbright yellow center. Jinbe’s knowledge of surface flora is vague at best; these are daisies, maybe? 

She’s still holding the flower out, her hand trembling a little. 

Jinbe reaches out, and takes it. 

“Thank you,” he hears himself say. The stem is so small between his fingers. So fragile. 

She smiles, just a flicker but the realest he’s seen from her yet. Then she’s gone, hurrying away down the beach, and Jinbe watches as she tiptoes up to Hachi at the grill and tucks a flower into his apron. He looks down at the blossom in his hands, small and delicate and white. 

He tucks it behind his ear, and closes his eyes again, and falls asleep smiling. 


	90. chopper + dedicate

Chopper has always been ready to lay down his life for anyone willing to take it. 

It’s a consequence, he thinks sometimes, of being a herd animal. Because he’s a person now, mostly and most of the time, but he was a reindeer first, and some things don’t really go away; things that run deeper than a great sense of smell and the way his hooves still harden for winter whenever they land on a cold island. 

Reindeer don’t have leaders, not in the way humans do, the way where it _matters_ when they’re gone. The herd has a will of its own, and to die for it is natural, and to stand out from the herd means ostracization, which is only a nicer word for death. He would have died for the herd, he knows, once upon a time, because that was what he knew and the way things were, even though it had only ever hurt him in exchange. 

But the way he’d die for Luffy, Chopper thinks, is different. 

The herd had demanded dedication and conformity and sameness and strength and silence, and he had tried and tried and tried and given and given and given and it had never, ever been enough. The difference, Chopper thinks, is that Luffy has never demanded anything of him at all, except for everything he is and ever will be.

The difference, he thinks, is that for Luffy, he’s happy to give it.


	91. brook + love

“Hey, Brook,” Yorki said once, sitting on the bow of the ship and staring up at the sky. “What’s the difference between a love song and a sailing song?” 

From his place leaning against the railing, Brook snorted, looked away from the gentle waves of the nighttime ocean to grin over at his captain. “There’s no difference.” 

“There is!” 

“No, there’s not. We sail for the love of the sea; every love is also a voyage,” Brook countered. “So sailing songs are love songs and love songs are sailing songs.”

“That’s true,” Yorki conceded, “but! There’s still a difference.” 

“Oh?” 

“Love songs,” Yorki said, waving a finger for emphasis, “are about something that always ends, sooner or later. Sailing songs aren’t. Even when you reach the destination, there’s always another one waiting, always another adventure to be had and another sea to be sailed. And the wonder of sailing will last even after the sailors die.”

“Ah,” Brook said, and laughed, loud in the quiet night. “Wrong again, my friend. Love doesn’t end either, not if you don’t want it to. And what’s the wonder of sailing but the love of the horizon?” 

Yorki hummed, and when Brook looked over at him, he was smiling up at the stars. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Damn it, Brook, why do you have to be right all the time?” 

Brook chuckled. “Well, someone on this ship has got to be.” 

“Oi!” Yorki complained, but he was laughing. 

Brook just smiled and looked back out at the ocean, listening to the distant whistle of the wind through the rigging and the endless lapping of the waves against the hull. From inside the ship, he could hear shouting and conversation clattering together, and rising above it all Luffy’s laughter, bright and joyous. 

“You ought to go sing them a song,” Yorki said. 

“A love song, or a sailing song?” 

Yorki shrugged. “They’re the same thing, aren’t they?” 

Brook laughed and tipped his hat, and went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is another of my favorites in this collection, i think


	92. nami + desire

For Nami, wanting is an old friend. She grew up with it, grew up hungry and jealous and always, always, always _wanting_ , from the brightly-colored books Bellemere couldn’t afford to buy her to the freedom always lingering just one job, one theft, one betrayal out of reach. 

She grew up starving, and learned to sharpen her teeth to eat, and for years and years that was all she knew.

The sunlight is warm on her skin, dappled by the leaves swaying back and forth over her head, branches jostled to and fro by the salt breeze and the rocking of the keel across the waves. She digs her thumbnail into the skin of the tangerine until it breaks though, peels it in one long curling strip with the ease of long practice. 

She can hear Sanji shouting, somewhere, and Robin laughing, and the low melodic singing of Brook practicing his violin by the stern. 

The wind is blowing north-northwest, moderately strong, and there’s a storm lurking somewhere out of sight; she can taste the lightning at the back of her mouth. But right now, the sunlight is bright, and the sky is blue, and the Log Pose is steady on her wrist, pointing them ever onwards towards the horizon. 

She wants for nothing, now, and sometimes she thinks it cannot possibly be real.

She crushes a slice of tangerine between her teeth, and closes her eyes to savor it.


	93. zoro + constellation

“Zoro! Zoro, Zoro, wake _up_!” 

He groans, reaches up to swat at the hands attempting to shake him awake. He misses, and the shaking doesn’t stop, so he scowls, blinks his eyes ( _eye_ , he keeps _forgetting_ ) open. “Fuck _off_ , Lu-“

“You’re up! Great! Come on, the fog’s cleared up!” 

His vision slides into focus frustratingly slowly, blurry from sleep, and the blur of pink in front of his face takes a moment to resolve into Perona. 

Oh. Right. 

“…What?” he says after a moment, after he’s grounded enough in the where and when again to start processing her actual words. 

“The fog’s cleared!” she repeats, and she must really be in a good mood, because she doesn’t even get frustrated at having to repeat herself. Her eyes are big and bright with excitement, and she’s bouncing a little in place. “We can see the stars!” 

He goes to raise an eyebrow, forgetting about the still-healing wound over his left eye, and only barely doesn’t flinch at the unexpected flash of pain. “I thought you _liked_ all that gloomy shit.” 

She huffs. “I do! It’s just... I don’t know. Look, are you coming or not?” 

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he mutters, dragging himself out of bed. A dozen different points of pain light up across his skin when he moves, injuries ranging from fresh to almost-healed. He ignores them; he’s good at that. He can almost hear Chopper yelling at him, but, well. Chopper’s not here.

She tugs him down the hall and up a long and winding stairway, taking the steps two at a time, and before long they’re stepping out onto the roof of Shikkearu Castle. The island below is drowning in darkness like always, the castle rooftop utterly lightless, but Perona’s right; the fog has lifted for once, and the whole world is kissed by the faint silver glow of starlight.

Zoro sits down- maybe a little too hard, but his head’s still a little spinny from recent blood loss, _sue him_ \- and looks up. 

The sky is _full_ of stars. 

They seem to shine even brighter than usual against Kuraigana’s swallowing darkness, trailing in blazing spirals across the pitch black sky. The moon is a thin silver crescent, almost new. 

Zoro’s never known much about stars. That was Nami’s territory more than anything; something about how you could use them to navigate, though of course that wasn’t worth anything on the Grand Line. Usopp always had stories about the constellations, too, and Robin could name every one. 

“See?” Perona says from where she’s sitting at his side, staring straight up. Her eyes are full of stars. “They’re pretty, right?” 

He wonders if any of his crew are looking up at the same stars right now, wherever they are. He hopes they are. It’s a beautiful night. 

“Yeah,” he says. “They are.” 


	94. usopp + hate

Usopp’s got four wanted posters that he keeps tucked in a pocket at the bottom of his bag, the paper soft from folding and unfolding. He doesn’t take them out to look at them much, not anymore, but he likes to have them anyways. 

The first is Luffy’s first wanted poster, from all the way back in East Blue, the one with the back of Usopp’s head in the corner and the number printed along the bottom that’s a fraction of a fraction what his captain’s worth now; a fraction of what _Usopp’s_ worth now, too, and that’s a thought that will never fail to make his heart trip over in his chest. 

There’s a jagged tear in it, stretching from one side of the poster almost to the other, ripping straight though Luffy’s smile. He’d wanted to _shred_ it, back then, sitting against Merry’s aft railing with his knees pulled up to his chest, resentment bubbling up in his lungs as he listened to the silence where his crewmates weren’t. 

He hadn’t quite torn it all the way in two. He’s so glad he didn’t. 

The second poster is Sogeking’s, and the third is Usopp’s, from Dressrosa, the first one that was really _his_ , his own face and his own name exposed before the world with no turning back. And the last one… 

The last one is the oldest, yellow and faded with age, so weak at the creases it’s starting to fall apart, and it says _Yasopp_ in bold black type below an old photo of a man with messy curls and sharp eyes. The paper is thoroughly wrinkled and worn, from all the times Usopp’s bunched it up into a ball and stopped just before hurling it into the ocean. 

Usopp hates his father, a little, but not as much as he loves him, and that’s hard, sometimes. 

He does want to see him. He’s certain of that much, at least. 

He just doesn’t know what he’ll do when he does.


	95. merry + solace

“Sorry, you know,” Franky says, absentmindedly, balancing a level on a beam of Adam Wood and squinting at it. He’s alone, for the moment, and the borrowed Galley-La workshop is quiet around them. She wonders if he knows she’s here. “Would’ve liked to fix you, if I could’ve.” 

_It’s okay_ , she tells him, sitting on the edge of the workbench and watching him work. _Nobody could’ve. But if anyone could’ve done it, it would’ve been you._

“But I will say,” he adds with a grin, “ _what_ a sendoff, huh?”

She laughs. _Right?_

“Never _seen_ a finer ship,” he continues, marking the beam out into even segments with a pencil before reaching for a handsaw. “Held together by scraps and will and still coming through for them like that…” he trails off, shakes his head a little, and the look on his face might be wonder. “That’s the sort of thing they tell stories about.” 

_They’ll tell stories about all of us, someday_ , she tells him, grinning, because she knows a Strawhat Pirate when she sees one. _We’re the Pirate King’s crew, don’t you know?_ _They’ll write us in the seas and in the stars, and they will_ never _forget our names._

He saws the wood into even, perfect rectangles, sets them aside, reaches for another plank. For a long minute, the two of them sit in comfortable silence, broken only by the soft, regular rasp of sandpaper. 

“You’ve left us with a lot of live up to, you know,” he says after a moment. “Me an’ her, I mean. Don’t know how the hell we’re supposed to measure up, after what you did.” He smiles. “You don’t have to worry, though. We’ll take good care of them.” 

She smiles, and feels nothing but warm, like she’s still dying beneath the morning sun. 

_I know._


	96. sunny + becoming

She’s so very young.

When she sets out to sea she’s new-born, clean white stitching in her sails, and the first thing she knows is sunlight on her decks, saltwater against her hull, the ringing of her captain’s laughter in the air and the songs of the seabirds wheeling above the harbor. 

The second thing she knows is love, in her breath and in her beams and in the wind as it catches her sails, as she sees the horizon and thinks, _oh_. 

The sky above and the sea stretching out ahead and all the infinite freedom they promise are all so _much_ that for a moment it’s almost overwhelming, almost inconceivable, because the world is endless and boundless and she knows she was born to see it all. For a moment, she’s almost frightened. 

But there’s a hand in hers, warm and reassuring, a whisper: 

_You’ll be wonderful._

She’s young but she’s learning, and she’s already begun becoming a thing of dreams. 

She spreads her wings, and _flies_. 


	97. vivi + distance

She closes the distance in little ways. It’s in the row of posters neatly pinned on her bedroom wall; in the giggling reminiscence shared with Carue in quiet moments; in the tattoo emblazoned in bold black ink on her wrist. 

Somedays, on the rare free days when she isn’t trapped in the capital by policy planning and repair organization, she goes down to the ocean. Carue carries her across the long miles of slowly-recovering desert to the river, to the little dock where she nearly threw her life away to chase her freedom out to sea. 

She sits on the end of the pier, pulls her sandals off, and swings her feet down into the water. It’s pleasantly cold against the midday heat, refreshing in the same way as the ocean breeze and the sea-salt spray, and she smiles.

There are years and miles between her and her crew, but the ocean is the ocean no matter where you are, and sitting here with the waves lapping at her ankles and the horizon before her eyes, they don’t feel nearly so far away.


	98. brook + fruit

“Brook,” Robin said, voice thoughtful, “do you ever regret eating your Devil Fruit?” 

Brook tipped his head. “Oh? What brought this on?” 

She shrugged slightly. “I was merely thinking about my own,” she said, waving a hand airily; two additional forearms blossomed from her elbow, then melted away into flower petals just as quickly as they’d appeared. “Once upon a time I considered it a curse, but I surely would not have survived without it. And it occurred to me that such mixed emotions must be even greater for you.” 

Brook hummed, absently twisting the knobs on his violin to have something to do with his hands. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I never did mean to eat it in the first place, you know.” 

“Nor did I,” Robin agreed with a smile, her gaze sliding over to the main deck, where their captain was, as ever, in motion. “Seems to be something of a pattern among members of our crew.” 

Brook laughed. “Indeed! Back when I ate mine, they were even less well-understood than they are today. It was nigh on a week before I even realized I’d lost my ability to swim!” 

“That must have been a terrible shock,” Robin said, looking bemused. 

“And even worse when we managed to find an encyclopedia and make a guess at which it was!” he continued, gesturing widely. “I was terribly disappointed, at the time. What good is a power that can only be used after you die? But, well…” 

He trailed off, thought of lightless decades, spent unliving and undying and so very, very alone; of music, and the wondrous cacophony of a hundred voices rising together; of a friend kept waiting for far too long, at the end of their endless voyage.

“You know? I don’t think I’ve ever regretted it once.”


	99. robin + buttons

“Your shirt is misbuttoned again, sir,” Robin said mildly, eyes flicking up from her teacup. She allowed the barest hint of a bemused smile to touch her lips as Crocodile’s expression cascaded through confusion, rage, and irritation before settling on a deep and abiding frustration. 

Her amusement clearly did not escape notice, because he scowled at her with enough darkness to drive a weaker-willed subordinate from the room in seconds. “Something _funny,_ Miss All Sunday?” 

“Nothing at all,” she said demurely, setting her teacup and newspaper aside and crossing the room. “Have you considered wearing fewer button-ups? They do seem to cause you difficulties.” 

His glare only deepened, but he held reluctantly still regardless as she set to work fixing the row of buttons. He’d missed a couple buttonholes when dressing himself, a common enough occurrence, and it had caused the two sides of the shirt to wind up misaligned, the fabric bunching and pulling oddly in places. 

It was perfectly obvious _why_ he had such trouble with buttons- one could hardly expect a one-handed man to be _good_ at them- but they were both bad enough people that she didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for teasing him about it regardless. She finished undoing the uneven tangle and redid the buttons from the top, fastening them with businesslike neatness. Even using only her own two hands, it took less than a minute. 

“There. Much more presentable,” she said, stepping back to survey her work. “A more fitting look for our esteemed Hero of Alabasta, don’t you think?” 

He scoffed, turning to leave. “Most people don’t survive testing my patience as far as you do, you know. Watch yourself.” 

She just smiled, and wondered which of them would kill the other, in the end. “Have a nice day, sir.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why _does_ crocodile wear so many buttoned shirts when he has a god damn hook hand


	100. jinbe + justice

“I grew up in a forest, you know,” Ace says, all of a sudden. This is how they’ve passed the time, over hours and days; intermittent bursts of conversation, fading out into exhausted silence before resuming minutes or hours later with a new topic, sometimes related, most of the time not. 

“Oh?” Jinbe says.

“Yeah,” Ace says, and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling above their heads, dank grey stone, swallowed in shadows. “It wasn’t easy. Never had a proper bed. We had a treehouse for awhile, though. That was nice.” 

“We?” Jinbe prompts, though he doesn’t really need to; Ace has mentioned his childhood- his _family_ \- enough times already for him to have a guess. 

“Me and my brothers,” Ace says, and smiles, just a little, bittersweet and wistful. “We built it ourselves. We had a big window in the side, so we could always see the sky.” 

They’re buried, the two of them, chained under seawater and steel and stone, consigned to the dark and the creeping cold, miles from the sunlight and the open air. Jinbe misses the sun and the surface, suddenly and fiercely, even though he’d made his choice without hesitation and would choose the same a thousand times over. 

“It wasn’t easy,” Ace repeats, sounding far away, “but at least we could always see the sky.” 

Jinbe has never believed in the marines’ idea of justice. How could he, when he’s seen what they do, what they excuse and ignore? When he’s seen them guard the backs of the Celestial Dragons who drag his brothers and sisters away in chains? 

(When the sound of the government gunshots tearing through the chest of a man who only ever wanted to be free has never stopped _echoing_?)

But looking at Ace, staring at the ceiling and dreaming of the sky, a hopeless half-smile on his face- 

He can’t help but think, _no one could call this justice_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicated to timmie who was distraught to learn there is not nearly enough jinbe and ace fic in the world
> 
> also, hey, chapter 100! that's cool


	101. sabo + cake

There are people starving. 

There are people _starving_ , outside the walls of Goa, eating trash and rot just to survive. Sabo’s heard about it, heard the rumors the nobles pass around under their breath, sneering and disdainful, about _those people_ , about the _human garbage_ , the _waste_. 

There are people starving, and Sabo is watching his father hurl a plate of cake to the floor. 

It hits with a squelching sort of crash, the porcelain shattering and the brown frosting splattering across the clean white tile. Outlook’s face is pulled into a grimace of distaste, teeth bared in clear disgust, and he whips around to address the nearest servant.

“This is _bitter!_ ” Outlook howls. “Where’s the sugar? You call this a _dessert_?”

The servant’s eyes are big, confusion clear on her face. “B-but- um, sir, you asked for… dark chocolate?” 

“ _So?_ ” 

“…Right, sir,” she says, voice small, and curtseys low. “I’ll tell the cook to make another at once, sir.” 

Sabo watches her go, her shoulders trembling, and the sweetness on his tongue is all at once cloying enough to make him wretch. He feels, a little, like he’s going to be sick. It’s a moment before he can make himself say anything.

“…I thought the cake was good,” he says quietly, his hands curling into fists against the napkin in his lap. 

Outlook just scoffs. “It was passable,” he says, and something goes cold in Sabo’s chest. “But you need to remind the lower classes of their place now and then. Keep them from getting uppity. You’ll understand someday.” 

And Sabo can’t help but think he would rather die. 

He runs away that night.


	102. chopper + leaf

“So I think that’s- _Luffydon’teatthat!_ ” Chopper yelped, voice spiking up an octave all at once, bouncing immediately up into Heavy Point to slap the bundle of herbs out of his captain’s hand. 

“But I’m _hungry,_ ” Luffy whined, trying to wriggle out of Chopper’s grip as Chopper wrestled him efficiently back into bed. “I’ve been in here for ages!”

“You don’t even _like_ vegetables,” Chopper said, more than a little exasperated. And, actually, more importantly- “And you wouldn’t even be _in_ here if you hadn’t gotten so much water in your lungs I thought you might _die-_ “ and, even more importantly- “ _And_ those aren’t even _food!_ ”

Luffy blinked owlishly. “But they’re just leaves,” he said. “Sanji puts leaves on food all the time.” 

“They’re- different leaves, okay?” Chopper said, briefly considering a full explanation and just as quickly discarding it. “These kinds of leaves are… they can be really useful for doctoring things, but they’re _very very_ bad to just eat a bunch at once, alright?” 

“Like poison?” Luffy frowned. “ _Hey_ , but you said I couldn’t get poisoned anymore.” 

“They’re not really poison,” Chopper said. “They’re kind of like the opposite of poison? But they can still be very bad for your body.” 

Luffy nodded decisively. “Got it! Mystery leaves!” 

“That’s- actually, sure,” Chopper said. “Mystery leaves. _Don’t eat them_.” 


	103. franky + static

“What’re you working- _ah!_ ” Iceburg yanked his hand away with a rather undignified yelp, flapping it back and forth like that would make the burning tingle of electrocution fade from his reddening fingertips. “What the _fuck?_ Is that _all_ ungrounded circuitry?” 

“Yeah?” Franky said from his spot sitting on the floor, glancing away from the exposed engine guts to look up at Iceburg like he was an idiot. “So don’t stick your _hands_ in it, Icebrain.” 

“You could’ve _warned_ me.” 

“You could’ve not _touched my shit_ ,” Franky parried back, though without real heat, and it was so familiar that Iceburg couldn’t help but laugh, dropping down gracelessly to sit crosslegged beside him. 

“Really, though,” he said after a moment. “Why’re you doing it like that? Tom-san was always on you to remember to ground your shit. Still haven’t shocked yourself enough times to learn your lesson?” 

Franky just grinned, drumming on one of his oversized forearms with his other fist. The sound it produced was hollow and metallic, like banging a hammer against the hull of a warship. 

Oh. Right. 

“Couldn’t electrocute myself if I _tried_ , now,” Franky said, a note of pride in his voice. As though to demonstrate, he picked up his screwdriver again and shoved both hands right back into the engine guts. As Iceburg watched, sparks danced over his hands, blue and white, skittering up to his elbows before fizzling out into the air. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t _know_ his little brother was torn to pieces and rebuilt himself from scrap and ruin and blood, but it was one thing to _know_ and another thing entirely to _see_ , and, well. He hadn’t seen Franky much, since then. 

“Though…” Franky added thoughtfully, and there was just enough of a mischievous note in his voice to put Iceburg on edge, but he still didn’t manage to duck out of the way in time when Franky reached over to poke him in the arm. There was a sharp _snap_ of static, and Iceburg flinched away, swearing vividly at the shock. 

“It _does_ give me _hella_ static.” 

“ _Fuck_ you,” Iceburg said emphatically, rubbing at the still-tingling spot on his upper arm. “You’re the _worst_.” 

Franky just laughed, and Iceburg nearly punched him in the arm out of sheer habit before he realized doing so ran a real risk of breaking his knuckles. “The _worst,_ ” he repeated instead, with all the feeling he could muster.

But there was engine grease smeared up his forearms and sawdust in the air, and Franky was laughing at his side, and Iceburg could’ve been eighteen again.

He couldn’t bring himself to really be angry at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another favorite... i love these stupid brothers


	104. nami + chill

She tastes the chill even before she feels it; sharp in the air, like peppermint and ice. She’s already setting her glass aside when it brushes against her skin a moment later. It’s a subtle thing, not even cold enough to raise goosebumps, almost unnoticeable beneath the sunshine warmth. 

But oh, Nami is _good_ at noticing the subtle things. 

“Cold front!” she calls out, swinging her legs down off her chair and standing. In the same fluid movement she checks her Log Pose, then the sails, then the shadows on the horizon. Her voice rings across the deck, forcing all her crewmates to pause what they’re doing to listen. 

“Approaching from…” she trails off, licks a finger and holds it up for a moment to gauge the wind’s bearing. “Two o’clock. Rough waves, pressure drop, possible winter storm. Usopp, Sanji, bring in the sails- Robin, secure anything loose on deck, please- Jinbe, take the helm.” 

The first gust of cold wind hits not seconds after, snapping at the sails and flattening the flag against the mast, and her crew springs into action. She remembers a similar scene, years ago: a smaller ship, a smaller crew, two islands into the Grand Line and just beginning to learn the rhythm of survival on the world’s greatest sea. 

She grabs onto the nearest rail to brace herself as the clouds trample over the horizon, heavy and dark. The cold wind whips the waves into whitecaps, dragging the water higher and higher and tossing the Sunny back and forth, but the sails are already drawn and the hatches secured, and their ship of dreams holds true. Nami grins, sharp and satisfied. 

She’s learned, now. She reads the wind and the clouds and the heat the same way Brook reads his sheet music, with all the elegance of a master of her craft. 

A little storm like this is nothing.


	105. luffy + height

“Heels against the doorframe, Luffy,” Makino said, pushing his head back gently until his skull was pressing against the weathered wood. He shuffled his feet back obediently until she nodded, looking satisfied. 

“Would one of you pass me that menu off the bar, please?” she asked Ace and Sabo over her shoulder, and a brief scuffle promptly ensued. While she was looking away, Luffy shifted in his sandals, trying to stealthily rock up onto his tiptoes. 

She turned back around, menu obtained from a triumphant-looking Sabo, and immediately frowned. “Luffy, stand flat,” she scolded, pressing a palm to the top of his head and pushing him back down. Ace snickered; Luffy pouted.

“Hold still, now,” Makino said, setting the menu on top of his head and holding it steady with one hand, using her other to pull the pencil stub from behind her ear and make a careful mark against the doorframe. “There we go!” 

She took her hand off of Luffy’s head, and he immediately bounced away from the doorframe to retrieve his hat. “You boys are growing so fast,” she remarked, a warm note in her voice as she noted some numbers down next to the three neat tallies she’d made. “Hard to believe it’s been less than six months since the last time I measured you.”

“So long as I’m still tallest,” Ace said, sounding not a little smug. 

“Only _barely,_ ” Sabo objected immediately, at the same moment Luffy said, “I’ll be taller than you someday!”

“As _if_ -“ 

Makino just laughed, pressing a hand to her mouth and giggling helplessly for a moment before pushing herself to her feet and wiping her hands on her apron. 

“Well, now,” she said, smiling. “Thank you for letting me measure you, you three. How about some lunch?” 


	106. robin + wish

The midnight skies above Baltigo were bright with stars. Robin leaned against one of the many white stone ledges and tilted her face skywards, bathing in the faint silver light. 

“Robin-san?” a voice asked, politely soft.

Robin smiled without looking away from the heavens. “Koala,” she said. “Have you ever wished on a star?” 

Koala was quiet for a moment before moving to settle herself against the ledge at Robin’s side, following her gaze upwards. “I don’t think so,” she said quietly. “I- missed out, on a lot of… childhood.” 

“We’ve got that in common, then,” Robin said, giving the younger woman a sympathetic smile. “But do you know, it’s never too late to start.” 

Koala laughed a little, ducking her head. “Ahh, I’d probably feel silly,” she said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned with the Army, it’s that you don’t change the world just by wishing, anyways.”

And that was true. If there was one thing Robin had ever learned over the painful, lonely years, it was that nothing ever got better just because you wanted it to. But every change _started_ with a wish, and Robin had prayed for salvation and it had come as a shooting star blazing across the sky, and maybe she found it was a bit easier to believe in magic, these days. 

“You never know unless you try,” was all she said, and her voice came out softer than she meant it to.

Just then, a streak of light blurred across the sky, brief but oh-so-bright. Koala gasped a little, eyes snapping skyward just in time to catch the flare of the comet’s tail. 

For a long moment, they sat in silence.

“Did you make a wish?” Robin asked, smiling. 

“…I did,” Koala said, looking down at the ground. Robin could see a hint of a smile playing around her lips. “Who knows if it’ll come true, but-“ 

“…but it never hurts to try,” Robin finished for her. “Indeed.” 

“What about you, Robin-san?” Koala asked after another moment. “What did you wish for?” 

Robin chuckled, and looked up at the sky. 

(Sunshine days and laughter, the smell of Sanji’s cooking and the sound of Usopp’s fretting and the taste of Nami’s tangerines, the rush of battle and the unparalleled thrill of a successful escape-)

“If I tell,” she said, and smiled, “it won’t come true.”


	107. chopper + sky

The sky is _full_ of cherry blossoms.

And- Chopper knows, really, that that’s not a miracle, here in Wano, not like it had been in the Drum Kingdom. Kin’emon had been happy to tell him when he asked, his face lighting up in a nostalgic kind of way. He’d talked all about how Wano’s cherry blossoms were its pride and joy, blossoming to usher in the spring every year; new life, new growth. Recovery. 

There were so many fewer trees than there used to be, Kin’emon had said after a pause, expression darkening with grief. What had once been lush groves, carpeted in pink come spring, had withered and died over the country’s decades of oppression, their trees poisoned at the roots. Only a few still survived, fighting for survival against polluted water and parched earth.

(Wano’s cherry trees were much like its people, in that.)

The cherry groves a shadow of what they once were, what trees remain half-dead and wasted away, and yet, and yet, and _yet_ \- 

Wano is free, and the sky is pink. 

The fallen cherry blossoms lie thin and patchy on the ground, and it’s nothing like the thick carpet of petals Kin’emon had described, but it will be. Maybe in years, maybe in decades, but it will be. 

Because here is a secret Chopper knows: the healing always takes far longer than the hurting, because it’s one thing to kick a boulder down a mountain and another entirely to roll it back up again. And here is another secret Chopper knows: even so, there is nothing that cannot be healed. 

Drum had healed, and so will Wano, with time. And for all its scarcities, _time_ is one thing Wano now has in abundance. It will heal. 

In the meantime, though; the sun is bright, and the sky is pink with drifting cherry blossoms, and there are few medicines more potent than hope. 


	108. sabo + laughter

“You need to relax a little.”

“No.” 

“‘No’? That’s it? No ‘ _be serious, Sabo’_? No ‘ _keep it down, they might hear’?_ No ‘ _this is an important mission, we can’t afford to-‘“_

“Seas below, _shut up_.” 

“…Really, though. The ball doesn’t start till sundown, so we’re going to be in here for another hour at least, and you’re wound like a spring. You need to take it easier. You’ll go grey before thirty. Like Hack.”

“If I go grey early, it’ll be because of _you_.” 

“That’s not fair. What’ve I ever done to you?”

“Oh, don’t get me _started_. If I killed you before we got out of here, I don’t think anyone would hold me responsible.” 

“That’s true, _but_. If you did that, you’d probably get stuck with my job.” 

“…Damn it. You’re safe. For now.” 

“Oh, only for now?” 

“You never know! I can’t let you out of my sight for a second, or you’ll, I don’t know, stick a cigarette in some noble’s tailcoat and clock how long it takes him to notice the burning.” 

“That’s a _great_ idea, actually-“

“ _No!_ ” she says, but she’s laughing, finally, muffled into her hand, and he grins.

Success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couldn't find a place to fit this information in with the dialogue-only format, but this conversation takes place while koala and sabo are hiding in a closet in the process of infiltrating a fancy party


	109. usopp + bandaid

The bleeding isn’t _bad_ , really, it’s just _everywhere_.

There are a hundred hundred cuts and scraps and abrasions littered across his skin, interrupted by bruises and lumps already beginning to swell, but none of them are _bad_. None need a doctor, at least, and Luffy never fights with restraint but Usopp can’t help but wonder if it was intentional anyways-

He bites his lip until the one new spot of pain stands out enough from all the rest to pull his thoughts off that pointless path, and reaches for another bandage. 

It’s been… awhile, since he had to patch himself up like this. It takes him back, kind of, to Syrup Village. He’d always bandaged his own scraped knees and skinned elbows, at least until Kaya found out and demanded he let her help. Her smile was always so bright, when he let her. She loved helping so much.

(He wants to see her smile like that when he brings Merry home to her, too.)

His wrist is throbbing deep and painful and so are his fingers, from the Impact Dial. He’s not sure if anything is sprained, or broken, but if it is he doesn’t really have the materials to treat that properly in any case, so. He’s got bandages. He makes do. He always has.

He tells himself he doesn’t hear Chopper calling him an idiot. It’s a lie, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s always been the best at those, anyways. 

Something wet drips into his eye, and for a moment he thinks it’s rain before his vision goes red on one side and it registers as blood. He guesses he must be bleeding somewhere on his forehead, too. Everything is pain, right now, so he’s not really surprised it got lost. He gently feels for the gash with his fingers, plasters another bandage over it once he finds it. 

He’s aching down to his bones, and something is twinging in his chest and something else in his back and he’s starting to feel a little lightheaded and he’s not sure if that’s the blood loss or if he’s got a concussion, maybe? But he’s fine. It’s fine. He’s got a lot of bandages, and he’s got Merry, and everything else will work itself out.

“Right?” he asks her, tilting his head back to look up at her figurehead and ignoring the twang of pain the movement sends down his spine. “We’ll be fine, eh? Just need some bandages, the both of us.” 

( _No_ , she tells him, _no, go home, please, go back, go home_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something about putting bandages on broken bones


	110. jinbe + sunset

“Oyabun- _sama_?” 

Jinbe chuckles a little, fond, and tilts his head back to meet the princess’s eyes. “You don’t need to call me that, you know. You’d be well within your rights to just call me by my name.” 

“But that would be _rude_ ,” she says, sounding genuinely horrified, and he has to laugh. 

“Well, call me whatever you like, then,” he says, grinning. “What did you want to ask, Princess?” 

“Oh, right. Um...” she trails off, and watery blue eyes flicker away, almost ashamed. “You’ve... been to the surface, right?” 

He straightens a little, paying proper attention now. “Many times.” 

“Will you...” She pauses, wets her lips. “Will you tell me about the sun?”

For a moment, he just looks at her. She’s taller than him (and everyone, really), has been for years now, and yet the way she holds herself, anxious and folded inwards, makes her look almost small, and it breaks his heart, a little. Sometimes she reminds him so very much of her mother, and sometimes she doesn’t at all. 

“Of course I will,” he says, once he’s found his voice again, and it’s almost sad how much she brightens, like he’s just given her the greatest gift she could have asked for. “What do you want to know?” 

“Anything!” she says, shifting a little, settling in to listen with light in her eyes. 

He chuckles, settles back against the wall he’s sitting against. “Alright, then. Hmmm… well, do you know how the sun crosses the sky each day?” She nods, and he continues, “It starts from one horizon, and that’s called sunrise. On the surface, you can watch the sunrise every morning. Sometimes it turns the sky orange and pink, and if you’re at sea, the reflection turns the waves gold.” 

“When night falls, though, is even better,” he says, after a quiet moment. “That’s sunset. The sun blazes as it disappears behind the horizon again, and more often than not the clouds are all lit up with color. Sometimes it looks like the whole sky is on fire. And if the sky is red at sunset, that’s good fortune for sailors. I think it’s the best sight there is.” 

“Oh… it sounds beautiful,” Shirahoshi breathes, her voice soft with wonder, her gaze far away. “I want to see it, someday.” 

His heart breaks for her, a little. 

“You will,” he tells her, and prays it’s not a lie. 


	111. sanji + laugh

The first time Zeff hears Sanji laugh is a good five months after they start up their restaurant, and it nearly brings him to his knees then and there. 

Because- he won’t admit it, but Zeff _worries_ about the kid, sometimes. Sanji is loud and angry and kind of a little shit, and if Zeff dies of stress early it’ll probably be because the brat can’t seem to stop lipping off to customers twice his size, but. He’s not stupid, and he’s not deaf either, and he’d have to be both not to notice the way the kid cries in his sleep. 

He doesn’t ask questions. He’s got his own past, too, buried now on the seabed with his ship and his crew, and if he’s not eager to dredge that up it sure wouldn’t be kind or fair to make the brat do the same.

(And Zeff’s never been kind or fair, really, but he’s got a kid to look after, now, and so he learns.)

So he doesn’t ask questions. He watches and listens and worries, somewhere deep down in his chest, and does the best he can. 

And then, one day- 

Patty, one of those idiot new chefs they’ve just hired, sets a tray of appetizers down on a customer’s table with an ostentatious bow that doesn’t match his brawny build in the slightest, turns to leave with a twirling flourish, and trips _spectacularly_ on the trailing edge of the tablecloth. 

Patty’s feet fly out from under him and he tumbles, yanking the whole tablecloth and about half of the dishes on the table with him. He crashes to the floor with a massive clatter of breaking porcelain and rattling silverware, and for a moment the restaurant is quiet.

And then there’s laughter, it’s so unfamiliar Zeff doesn’t even recognize the voice until he turns and looks. 

Sanji is laughing so hard he’s _crying_ , bent almost double and with his hand on a vacant chair just to keep himself upright, and it might be the best sound Zeff’s ever heard. 

Patty’s whole face is red as he pushes himself to his feet. “Hey, shut up, dumb _brat_ -“ 

Zeff rolls his eyes, but doesn’t even try to hide his smile. “If you think it’s that funny, you can help clean it up, Sanji.” 

“Sure, sure,” Sanji says once he finds his voice again, still snickering under his breath. “Wouldn’t want-“ and he breaks into giggles again- “-wouldn’t want either of _you_ geezers to mess up your backs cleaning up a little spill.” 

“ _Hey-_ “ 

Zeff watches him hurry back into the kitchen for buckets and rags, and listens to the snickering laughter still trailing behind him, and grins. 

Maybe they’re gonna be okay after all.


	112. franky + love

The sun is breaking over the horizon, painting the sky with an explosion of yellow and gold that bleeds into greyish blue as it crawls further and further across the sky. The ship is quiet, most of the crew still asleep, and the world is still.

Franky leans against the bow and grins over at the figurehead. In the light of the breaking dawn, Sunny’s mane is just the same color as the sunburst where the sky meets the sea. He pats her railing reassuringly, suddenly fond. 

“How’s it going, girl? No problems, right?” he asks, then grins. “I know you’d tell me if there were.”

The ocean stretches ahead of them, blue and endless, and Franky never really thought he’d be here. Dreamed it, maybe, once upon a time, sitting on the docks of Water Seven and watching the sun come up across the water, but it’s one thing to dream and another thing entirely to do. 

(What he admires about Luffy, maybe, is that to him there’s no difference at all.) 

And now he’s here, after everything, _despite_ everything, sailing on his ship of dreams, the boards beneath his feet and the wind in his hair and the sun breaking over the horizon.

He loves it more than anything.


	113. nami + sun

She always used to wonder. And she knew that was dangerous, wondering, when asking questions was prone to win her a glare if she was lucky and a black eye if she wasn’t, but she couldn’t help it. The fishmen had been so different, so _alien_ , incomprehensible in their cruelty. Of course she couldn’t help but wonder, and there was one mystery, small but niggling, that dogged her more than the others. 

Eventually she’d had to ask. She chose her time and target carefully, caught Hachi’s attention when Arlong and Kuroobi weren’t around. 

(He was the least likely to hit her, if she said something wrong.)

“Huh? Nami?” he’d said, blinking down at her. “What’s up?” 

And she’d had the question ready, but as soon as his eyes settled on her, it withered on her tongue, and it took a moment for her to find her voice again. “I was wondering… um, I mean. If it’s okay to ask… what’s that sun mean?” 

“Sun?” he’d echoed, sounding confused, and she’d pointed wordlessly at the mark above his eyes.

He’d blinked, raised one of his too-many hands to press against his forehead, like he’d almost forgotten it was there. Something old and aching-painful had flickered though his eyes before his face darkened, and she’d had to fight the urge to shrink back. 

“Make sure Arlong doesn’t hear you asking about that,” was all he’d said, colder than she’d ever heard him. He’d turned and gone without another word, all six hands balled into fists at his sides. 

She’d hurried back to her room, and spent the rest of the evening shaking. She’d never asked again; she’d accepted that she’d never understand, never really know who they were and where they’d come from and why they’d torn her life to bleeding pieces. That sometimes monsters were just monsters, and they didn’t need stories or reasons. 

That was then.

But these days-

“Jinbe,” she says, staring up at the wide blue sky, the salt wind in her hair and the sun on her skin. “Tell me a story about the Sun Pirates?” 

He smiles, and does.


	114. brook + mind

He’s lost his mind, probably. 

What’s funny is, he doesn’t even remember when he lost it. The days and weeks and months and years all drag and blur together, impossible to distinguish. Nothing to mark the hours apart from one another, no sunlight through the mist to signal the cycling of days.

Did it happen when he first started hearing laughter and snatches of song, floating up from the galley or the stern like there was a lively party just out of sight (out of reach)? How long ago was that? Did it happen when he started holding conversations with the shadows of men long since dead and rotted? How long ago was _that_?

How long has it been? How far gone is he?

He can’t tell, and maybe that’s the worst part of it. Maybe none of what he sees is real at all. Maybe all of it is. He doesn’t know which is scarier.

There’s a little ship bobbing through the mist and across the waves, gold and red and far too bright and alive to exist here, in this place full of nothing but dead and dying things. It’s probably not real, but it is darling to look at, so he watches it from the railing with a cup of tea in hand. 

It’s real, he learns quickly. 

He never could have imagined Monkey D. Luffy.


	115. franky + tea

Franky doesn’t drink tea. Give him a nice cold bottle of cola any day. 

When he was younger, back in Water Seven, he used to have a taste for coffee; so did Iceburg, the both of them downing it like a competition to wake themselves up on the early mornings when they had to be up and working on the sea train before daybreak. He’ll drink beer, too, from time to time, even if it doesn’t really affect him like it used to. It’s still fun to share a toast with his crew, or grab a drink at a bar. But he’s never liked tea. 

And yet, here he is.

The galley is soft with nighttime quiet. The only sounds are Brook’s gentle humming, the lapping of waves against the hull outside, and the quiet bubbling of the tea kettle as Robin lifts it from the stove with a surplus hand. 

All three of them are sleepless, tonight, it seems. 

Robin pours the tea with steady hands; first his, then Brook’s, then her own. The liquid is honey-yellow and steaming, and Franky’s sense of smell isn’t great (it’s never been a priority to fix), but even he can tell it smells nice. 

Robin catches his eye, smiles. “Chamomile,” she says, lifting her cup delicately to her lips. “To help with nightmares.” 

Franky picks his own cup up in hands that feel far too large and clumsy for the delicate porcelain, eyes it uncertainly for a moment, then drinks. 

It’s nice. 

He feels the warmth of it pooling in his chest, listens to Brook’s humming and Robin’s soft laughter and the soothing rhythm of the waves against the hull of his ship of dreams, and little by little the echoes of the nightmares fade away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm doing a little promptober challenge by writing a drabble each day using a prompt list one of my friends made and then asking discord for a character to do it with- i got four days in before i realized i should probably be posting them here too. so here we are!


	116. usopp + forge

When Usopp was ten, his first slingshot broke to pieces in his hands, yanked apart by the force of its own recoil, a too-tight band twisted around a too-fragile twig. The backlash left an angry red welt on the inside of his hand, but he’d barely noticed the pain, preoccupied with crouching down to pick up the broken pieces and squint at them. He’d run curious fingers over the broken ends, tried to figure out what went wrong, where the stress had become too much.

And then he made a better one. 

Usopp improves. It’s what he does. 

He’s not like Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Robin, steel from the start; even Chopper and Nami came to the crew experts in their fields, already tempered in their own ways, trialed by fire again and again and come out the other side stronger for it. 

Usopp’s not like them, he knows. He’s weaker, and not just when it comes to fighting. He’s the kind of person more prone to break than bend when the pressures start coming, when the fears start piling up, when you’re past the point of no return and everything is all at once terrible and terrifying and _real_. 

But the thing is, also, Usopp grew up on his own, with a heater that needed to be kept working through winter and a fridge and fan that needed to stay working through summer. He knows what to do when things break apart- you fix them, yes, but you look, first, at what went wrong and where, and build it better next time. 

So Usopp breaks. 

And then he picks himself back up, and forges himself back together with will and loyalty and love, to make sure it’ll never happen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day two: forge


	117. nami + discreet

Sanji’s crying in a way she knows, muffled and guilty and discreet, and she frowns before crossing the moonlit deck to where he’s huddled against the rail. He startles a little when he sees her, starts frantically swiping at his eyes, and she sighs. 

“Don’t worry,” she says quietly, and sits down next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “I won’t tell anybody. But if you get weird, I’m throwing you off the ship, and you can swim back,” she adds severely after a moment. 

He laughs, a little ragged and messy, and swipes at his eyes with his sleeve again. “...Understood,” he mutters after a moment. “Sorry. Didn’t really want anybody to...” he trails off, makes a vague gesture with one hand. It’s completely unhelpful, but she thinks she gets it anyway. “Caused you all enough trouble already.” 

“You did,” she agrees. “But who cares?”

He looks at her askance, and she rolls her eyes and pokes him in the shoulder hard. “I said I was mad at you,” she says. “And I was. I am. You’re a fucking idiot.” She pauses, then softens. “I never said I didn’t _get_ it. Have you forgotten what _I_ did?” 

He looks away. “That was different.” 

She snorts. “Why, because I didn’t try to smash the captain’s head in?” 

He flinches, but rallies. “You didn’t have a choice.”

“Oh, and you did?” she asks, eyebrow raised. 

He presses his lips together tightly, doesn’t say anything. He turns to look out over the ocean instead, and she follows his gaze, the stars above reflecting down on the endless waves. The look in his eyes when he looks at the horizon is one she knows down to her bones. 

They were both chained, once, chained and dreaming of freedom.

“He’ll never give up on us,” Nami says, because she tried and tried and _tried_ to make him go away, and he never abandoned her for a moment. “No matter if we deserve it or not. That’s just not how he thinks about things.” 

“He deserves better,” he says, and she can read between the lines. _Deserves better than betrayal and bitter words, better than leftovers and damaged goods. Better than me._

She shrugs, doesn’t agree or disagree. “But he chose us.” 

He chuckles, resigned and fond and tired. “Yeah. Idiot.” 

She bumps his shoulder with hers. “So,” she says, “we’re going to make him king.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Of course.” 

It’s the least they can do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got a little derailed from the prompt on this one, but i'm happy with it anyways! set soon after wci, in case its not clear.


	118. koala + horizon

Dawn is breaking over the horizon, and Koala stands at the bow of the ship, knuckles white around the rail, shoulders tense. They’ll be arriving later today. She hasn’t slept. 

(That’s nothing new. Sleep is an elusive thing, for her. It has been for years now.)

The ocean spreads out ahead of them, vast and endless, and maybe if she squints against the glow of dawn she can see the shadow of their destination resting on the horizon, still too vague and distant to make out any details. She’s sailed enough that the ghost of an island in the distance is a familiar sight, by now, but the knot of mixed excitement and anxious anticipation in her chest never gets any easier to swallow. 

She doesn’t know what she’ll find, when she reaches that shadow in the distance. She barely even knows what she’s looking for. Her only compass-needle is her anger, burning on her back and swallowing her lungs, the kind of righteous rage that _demands_ an outlet, else she’ll burn from the inside out. 

It’s pointing her dead ahead to Baltigo. 

She hears Hack’s footsteps approaching, soft against the planks, coming to a halt a step behind her. 

“We should make landfall by midmorning,” he says. She doesn’t look around, eyes fixed on the horizon line. “How’re you feeling?” 

She shrugs a little, chews on her lip to force down the impulse to smile. It still wells up sometimes, whenever she’s feeling anxious and powerless, and she _hates_ it. “Nervous.” 

“You’ll do fine,” he tells her, and the simple confidence in his voice is at once reassuring and not. 

“How do you know?” she asks, and tries not to sound too pleading, too uncertain, too young. 

(Her fourteenth birthday was two weeks ago.) 

Hack just chuckles, and it reminds her a little of Jinbe’s laugh, low and rumbling and reassuring. “Because you’re angry,” he says. “Anger is the blood of revolution. It’s the only way change ever happens.” He steps up to the rail at her side, smiles down at her. “You’ll fit right in.” 

Baltigo is clearer, now, standing silhouetted on the horizon against the rising sun. 

A new beginning, she hopes. 

Fitting, that it should be cast against the sunrise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day four: horizon! i love koala,, SO much


	119. luffy + topple

Luffy has never liked castles. 

There was one in the heart of Goa, rising high above the city, walled in and inaccessible. Luffy doesn’t remember what it looked like, had never really bothered to look, but he does remember the way Sabo had always scowled up at it, mouth tightening into an unhappy line, whenever they crossed through its shadow.

 _It’s so high up so they can look down on us,_ Sabo said once. _They think they’re so much better._

Luffy still remembers that, sometimes. 

He doesn’t like the kind of people who live in castles; the kind of people who lock other people up and steal their freedom and hurt them. Sometimes the people who live in castles are alright, _great_ , even, like Vivi and her old man. But sometimes- often- they’re not. 

Sometimes castles hold piles and piles and piles of maps and a single bloody pen; sometimes seastone chains and high white walls just like Goa’s; sometimes wedding bells and gingerbread doors and far too many mirrors. 

Luffy doesn’t care about places, really, but he does care about people, and Nami cried and Robin cried and Sanji cried and- 

-and Luffy doesn’t like castles. 

Sometimes they’re fit only to be toppled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 5: topple. luffy's pov is always such a challenge on these, because he's so allergic to introspection so they always wind up really short, but they're always really fun as well


	120. law + noise

It’s too loud. 

The doctors and nurses are shouting, and Cora-san is shouting back even louder, his voice rough with cigarette smoke. There’s breaking, crashing, an alarm sounding somewhere down the hall, footsteps racing back and forth, gurney wheels screeching along tiled floors, panicked voices, and-

And Law knows this, this din. This is what the hospital had always sounded like, during the early days of the plague, before it burned; new patients flooding in all the time and not enough beds to keep them all, a constant state of emergency. If he strains, he can almost believe he’ll hear his mother’s voice, shouting for a blood transfusion; his father, whispering reassurances to Lami as she lies too small and too sick in her too-big hospital bed. 

He can’t _listen_ to this.

He turns and buries his face in Cora-san’s shirt, closing his eyes against the too-familiar not-quite-home hospital walls and the horrified fear distorting the nurses’ faces. One of them is screaming, the rising wail only adding to the cacophony, and it’s so _loud_. 

Cora-san wraps an arm around Law to hold him close as he stands, chair clattering to the floor behind him, and rests a hand against the back of his head.

The world goes quiet. 

The alarms and the screaming and the running footsteps all go silent all at once, cutting off like they were never there, and Law is suddenly aware he’s been shaking. He’s not sure when he started. His teeth are clenched so tight his jaw is hurting, his hands clenched white-knuckled into the fabric of Cora-san’s shirt. 

It’s quiet now, though, but for the steady rhythm of Cora-san’s heartbeat beside his head, regular and calming; he doesn’t have to look and he doesn’t have to listen, and so slowly, inch by inch, he lets himself relax. 

Cora-san is moving, running, the vibrations of his footsteps running down his arms, but Law doesn’t look. Only clings to the fabric of Cora-san’s shirt between his fingers, to the smell of cigarette smoke that follows him everywhere, to the ever-present _thump-thump_ of his heart. 

And as the hospital goes up in flames around them, he falls asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is unrelated to the challenge ive been doing i just love law and it's his birthday tomorrow


	121. merry + force

She’s breaking. 

It’s the slowest kind of shattering, every collision and cannonball strike rattling down to her rib-beams and buckling spine, the cumulative force of every impact steadily pulling her to pieces. 

Her crew doesn’t know it, yet. 

Would she tell them, if she could, if her voice could reach them? She isn’t sure. She’d like to ask them to be more careful, perhaps, gentler on the landfall and kinder with her broken mast, but at the same time- 

She is breaking, and she won’t make it much further, and she knows that no measure of gentleness can stop these seas from ruining what was not built to sail them. And if there’s nothing to be done, she doesn’t want them to worry. What would her captain do, when faced with a problem he can’t fight, with a death that’s nothing but slow inevitability?

No, she wouldn’t tell them. She wants to enjoy what time she has. 

And _oh_ , enjoy it she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 6 of my promptober challenge: force


	122. law + promises

“Are you worried?” Law asks over the galley table one morning. The question is half-spontaneous, prompted by nothing but the uninformative newspaper sitting on the table between them and a quiet, niggling curiosity. 

Zoro’s eye flickers over to him over his teacup. “What, about Luffy?” 

“Yeah.” 

Zoro snorts, looks away again. “No.” 

“He’s gone to challenge an Emperor.” 

“Yeah.” 

“He could die.” 

Zoro glances back at him. “No,” he says, slowly, like Law is very stupid. If Law was a little less tired he might have made him regret that, but as it is he’s _exhausted_ (mostly from having to wrangle four Strawhats for several days on end) and the coffee isn’t helping as much as he’d like, so he lets it slide. 

“How can you know?” 

“He said he’d be back,” Zoro says, like Luffy’s word is the law of the universe, unmoving and unbreakable, and Law hates a little that he hasn’t yet seen anything to prove him wrong. “So he’ll be back.” 

And Law- he gets it, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t, because he’d said the same thing to _his_ crew before leaving to die on the sunbaked stones of Dressrosa, empty words of stopgap reassurance, and _he_ certainly hadn’t ever meant to come back. And he doubts that Bepo had had the same level of rock-solid trust in his return that Zoro has in Luffy’s. But that’s the difference, maybe, between him and Luffy. 

Luffy keeps his promises. 

Even when they’re stupid, and reckless, and impossible; even if it means throwing himself alone and headlong into an Emperor’s heartland; even if it means tossing away all sense and reason, all concern for himself and his crew, to fight the most dangerous man Law has ever known. 

(Second most dangerous, now.)

Law, on the other hand- 

Law would have broken all his promises- to his crew, to Cora-san, to himself- if Luffy hadn’t been there. He’s still not sure how he feels about that. Disappointed? That’s not right. Grateful? Not that, either. Lost? Maybe. 

The fact is that Law put all his hopes into someone else’s hands, and for once it didn’t hurt. 

“He’ll probably make a huge mess when he comes back,” he says, after a silence that’s dragged on for probably too long. “Blow all our covers.” 

_When_ , not _if_. 

“Probably,” Zoro agrees, and grins. 


	123. zoro + lotus

The lotus blossoms float serenely on the surface of the pond, petals spread wide and stained with sunrise colors. Beneath the still water, koi flicker in and out of sight, red and white scales catching glints of watery sunlight between the lilypad shadows. 

There’s a soft rustling of layered fabric behind him, the noise of grass crunching between sandaled feet, and then, “Beautiful, aren’t they?” 

“They are,” Zoro agrees. 

Hiyori sits down beside him, kimono rustling as she folds her legs neatly beneath her. “Long ago, Wano prided itself on its flowers,” she says, gaze fixed on the blossoms, soft with nostalgia. “The sakura in the spring, of course, the chrysanthemum as the symbol of royal blood… but the lotuses were always my favorite, I think. My mother used to take us to see them.” 

“I haven’t seen them anywhere else,” he comments, glancing around. The royal gardens surrounding the shougun’s castle- _Momo’s_ castle, now- are almost obscenely lush, dense with greenery and small animals and flowers upon flowers upon flowers. 

Hiyori’s reminiscent smile fades. “No. You wouldn’t have,” she agrees. “The ponds, the little streams and waterfalls, they were the first to become uninhabitable when the pollution became too much. The fish, the flowers… they couldn’t breathe through the poison.” 

The koi flicker in and out of sight through the dark, clean water, and the dance of the sunlight on their scales suddenly feels a much more precious sight. 

“We had a pond like this where I grew up,” Zoro says after a long lull. “Behind the dojo.” 

It wasn’t where he’d spent the most time- back then, he’d been much more likely to be found wrestling with boulders or battering practice swords to pieces. But it is, perhaps, the place he remembers most clearly, looking back now. There was something _precious_ about those rare quiet moments spent sitting at the waterside and watching the fish and letting the sweat cool on his skin, spaced between endless stretches of repetitive exertion. 

“It was… nice. Peaceful.” A long-forgotten memory surfaces, and he smiles. “My best friend pushed me into it, one time.” 

He doesn’t remember anymore what he’d said, to make Kuina roll her eyes and shove him, but he remembers the way the fish had scattered like shattered glass when he’d hit the surface, remembers spitting pondwater as he lunged back out of the water to grab her by the wrist and drag her in after him. They’d both wound up teeth chattering and soaked through, laughing, in the end. 

He hasn’t thought about that in a long time. 

Hiyori laughs, bright and startled, the shadows receding from her face again. “Is that so? I used to do that to my brother, too.” She giggles. “He never thought it was very funny, though.” 

“You could try it again,” Zoro suggests. “I mean, you’ve got the pond right here, and you’ve got an advantage now, you’re so much taller than him-“ 

She gasps and shoves him, but she’s laughing. “ _No!_ ” 

“You could really just pick him up and drop him, actually.” 

“That’s _terrible!_ ” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 7: lotus!
> 
> zoro and hiyori being friends,, makes my heart soft


	124. shirahoshi + wisdom

They sing, and she listens.

This is new, the listening. Perhaps they have always been singing, and perhaps she has always been hearing, whatever echoes reached her through walls of air and stone and the endless clattering of thrown weaponry, but she has never before _listened_. She hadn’t known how.

She’s learning, now. 

The ocean is vast, above and beneath and all around her, and Shirahoshi lies back against the currents and closes her eyes, and listens to the Sea Kings sing.

They are _old_ , this she knows; old and wise. They’ve seen so many things, histories unfolding and centuries disappearing and empires falling. Everything falls to the ocean eventually, after all, broken castles and sunken ships, and those who rule the ocean keep its secrets well. 

And who rules those who rule the ocean? Who hears the songs they sing?

A frightening thought, to be sure, one that makes her want to flee back into her castle of air and stone and hide away from the expectations and the responsibilities and the singing, singing, singing. She can’t do that, though, can’t run and hide anymore. That’s not what her mother would do; not what Luffy would do. So she sits, and lets the currents play with her hair, and listens. 

She can’t understand, not all of it, not yet. Their words are as old and slippery as they are, their thoughts as twisting and incomprehensible as the depths. Even being who she is it’s hard to grasp the meaning in the songs, to reach the core of ancient wisdom buried there. 

But- little by little, day by day. The songs become clearer, and the seas grow deeper. 

She’s learning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 8 of promptober challenge!


	125. robin + grove

Zou is a beautiful country, its forests lush and its trees massive. Robin wishes she could have seen it complete, not ravaged as it is now, but, well. She has long grown accustomed to ruins, to envisioning the glory of what had been from the wreckage of what is. At least this civilization yet survives, unlike so many of the others she’s studied. 

This grove she stands in now, though, seems to have escaped the worst of the damage. Much of the forest had. Jack’s attention must have been fixed on the city; tragic for the minks and their centuries of civilization, but fortunate at least for these trees, which have stood a thousand years and will stand a thousand more. 

She’s glad. Her focus is usually on the man-made, the histories built and maintained, and what happened to the ancient city was nothing less than an _atrocity_ , but-

She has ever resented the burning of trees.

Footsteps behind her; an eye blinks open on a branch overhead, and she smiles without turning. “Pedro-san.” 

“Nico Robin,” he returns the greeting, coming to a halt at her side. “I’m glad to have found you. I was looking for you.” 

She hums. “People often are.” 

“I’m sure,” he says, with a rumble of a chuckle in his voice. “I wanted to ask you something.” 

“Certainly,” she agrees, and waits for a moment while he gets his words in order.

“You’re a scholar of history,” he says. “In your studies... have you ever come across mention of the dawn of the world?”

“The dawn of the world,” she echoes, thoughtful. The words seem to ring through the air of their little grove, a weight to them that she cannot name. “I can’t say I’m familiar with that specific phrasing. But...” 

“But?” 

“Dawn is a very common obsession, throughout the mythologies and histories of our world. Countless societies have written of waiting for the dawn; the dawn of a new era, a new world. Sometimes the belief is religious, tied up in myth and legend, and sometimes it’s not. Dawn is the promise of a new day- it’s hope, light, life beyond the darkness.”

She shrugs, feels a smile ghost across her face. “Whether those ancient peoples awaited the same daybreak you ask about, I cannot say. Stories become so scattered, across the fog of ages. But it seems at least possible, I should think.” 

“I see,” Pedro says after a moment of thought. 

“I would like to give you a clearer answer,” she says. “But history is often frustrating.” 

He shakes his head. “No… that was a very good answer, I think.” He turns to go, adds over his shoulder, “Thank you for your expertise, and your time.” 

She smiles without turning back, looks up at the old, old trees and wonders at what buried histories they might know, what promised sunrise they await. “The pleasure is mine.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 9! i will never stop thinking about the dawn imagery in one piece


	126. vivi + lantern

A giggle, a hushing noise; two sets of small footsteps against the sandy stone, loud in the nighttime quiet. The grinding of a stone door open, and then closed again. 

A match struck, a lantern lit, and the darkness beneath the castle comes to twilight life, illuminated by a single dancing candle-flame. The light catches in Kohza’s eyes as they widen, and Vivi bounces on her toes a little as he turns in a slow circle, holding the lantern high to shed as much light as possible on the carved and painted stone all around them. 

“Cool, right?” she says, grinning. 

“What _is_ this place?” 

“It’s the crypts,” she says, pressing a finger to her lips in a wordless request for secrecy. Not that she needs to, really; she knows he won’t tell on her. “The kings and queens are buried here.” 

“It looks so _old_ ,” Kohza says, soft with awe, stepping closer to a pillar and raising his fingers to brush them against the carvings. 

Vivi nods, her father’s stories running through her head. “It’s been here since the castle was built. Since Alabasta was founded. Here, follow me.” 

It’s novel, to have him following in her footsteps instead of the other way around; to have something to show him that he’s never seen before, instead of the other way around. He’s shared the secrets of his world with her, and she wants to do the same, and so they delve deeper and deeper into the cavernous crypt, jumping down ancient stairways that crumple and slip with their passage. 

And eventually, they reach the stone, black and featureless but for the unreadable text graven into it in strict lines and columns. She reaches over to take the lantern from him, and he relinquishes it without complaint, eyes fixed on the incomprehensible letters. She holds the light higher, illuminating the dark surface, candlelight reflecting dimly against stone. 

“It’s been here forever and ever,” she tells him in a whisper. “Nobody can read it.” 

The block of engraved stone looms over them, massive and solid, its upped edges seeming to disappear into the shadows of the ceiling as they look up. 

“So you don’t know what it says?” Kohza asks. 

“Nobody does,” she tells him. “But it’s something important. The kings have been protecting it since _ever._ ” 

“Protecting it from who?” he asks.

She doesn’t have an answer, so she shrugs, their small circle of light shuddering with the movement. The stone sits, implacable and dark and so very, very old. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Probably nobody, after so long. But even if there _is_ somebody, it’ll be alright,” she says, and smiles. 

“So long as Alabasta stands, it’ll be safe.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 10!


	127. dragon + hoard

Dragon hated hoarders. 

Wasn’t that what the nobles were, after all? The Celestial Dragons, sitting on the pinnacle of the world and building their hoards of gold and power and knowledge, locking themselves away from the world and cocooning themselves in their riches. It wasn’t the existence of wealth and power itself that was the problem, he knew, but the jealous, grasping accumulation of it, while the people below scraped and suffered and starved. 

The _greed_ was almost incomprehensible to him. It was _wasteful_ , was what it was, cruel and pointless and wasteful. He didn’t know where it came from, that selfishness, that bottomless capacity for greed, for hurt. It couldn’t be solely born or learned, because- 

The clattering noise of running footsteps rapidly approaching down the hall behind him was all the warning he got before the door slammed open. He neatly sidestepped just in time to avoid both a broken nose and the two teenagers bolting through the newly-open doorway. 

“Get _back_ here!” Koala shouted, dodging around a desk, grabbing for the tail of Sabo’s coat and only barely missing. 

“Nope, nope, nope-“ 

Dragon raised an eyebrow, taking another step back to place himself safely out of the path of destruction as the chase wove around the room. There was a familiar chuckle at his side, and he glanced over as Ivankov stepped over to his side, grinning. 

“Energetic, aren’t they?” she said, sounding deeply amused. 

“What are they fighting over?” he asked. 

“I wouldn’t call it a _fight_ ,” Iva said. “Koala-chan found out that our dear Sabo is a better reader than her.” 

Dragon frowned. “That’s not surprising, is it?” After all, one was a former slave and the other had had- presumably- a nobleman’s education. “Why is she upset?” 

“Oh, she’s not upset because of that _exactly_ ,” Iva said. “She’s upset because apparently, he’s been letting _her_ handle the post-mission paperwork. An arrangement that, _I_ would guess, has just come to an end.” 

“Ah,” Dragon said, and carefully didn’t laugh. “I see.” 

He watched Koala tackle Sabo to the ground to the soundtrack of Iva’s laughter, and didn’t quite smile, but felt something settle in his chest nonetheless. The nobles were fools, every one of them, with their cold vaults of gold and silk and silver. 

He liked _his_ collection much better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 11: hoard


	128. big mom + crooked

Katakuri’s smile is a ruin. 

His mouthful of teeth are crooked and jagged and _ugly,_ the stitches in his cheeks still bloody because he can’t seem to stop _pulling_ on them, drawing crimson lines down to his chin and staining his skin with rusty droplets. It’s hard to look at, so she doesn’t. Why should she? 

Linlin loves her children. Of course she does; she’s their mother and they’re her children, and that means she loves them, obviously. She loves them, and they love her back. Because she’s their mother, and they’re her children, and that’s how this works. 

She loves her children. She just wishes they could be perfect. 

That’s not so much to ask, is it? She bore them, raised them, _loved_ them- they owe her that much, don’t they? 

So why do they always defy her? Why can’t they just sit down and listen to their mother? Why aren’t they ever quite who she wants them to be? Don’t they know she knows what’s best for them?

Katakuri gets in fights, and Brulee gets hurt, and it’s not that she thinks he _deserves_ it, exactly, but really, it all could have been avoided if he’d had the decency to just be born perfect. After all, it’s not like she’ll ever be able to marry him off, not with a face like that. 

It’s a relief when Katakuri starts wearing a scarf. His imperfection won’t get him into any more trouble, won't cause any more inconveniences. That’s why she’s relieved. 

(It has nothing to do with how she hates to look at him.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 12: crooked. this was a HECK of an exercise in unreliable narration


	129. nojiko + joy

Nami is laughing.

(Nami is _laughing!_ ) 

It’s bright and clear and a little bit tipsy, the sound rising like birdsong over the din of the party. For once, it isn’t thick with bitterness, isn’t heavy with self-loathing and hate. It’s only joy, pure and simple.

It’s the best sound Nojiko has ever heard.

She props her chin up in her hand, stares fondly across the firepit to where Nami is sitting sandwiched between two of her crewmates. She has one arm around Zoro’s shoulders, most of her weight slumped against his side, while her other arm is occupied furiously elbowing Luffy’s reaching hands away from the plate of foot in her lap. 

As Nojiko watches, one of Luffy’s grabs goes wide and smacks Zoro in the face; Zoro moves to lunge at him but gets caught by Nami grabbing hold of the back of his shirt and yanking him back down so she can keep leaning against his side. He grumbles, but settles back down without any protest. Luffy is snickering, and Nami is laughing, bright-eyed and red-cheeked. 

Everything in Nojiko’s chest that’s been frozen cold and careful for years and years is melting, now, a long thaw after an endless winter, and she feels like she’s going to cry, watching them. 

“If you just stay alive,” she murmurs, smiling, a whisper utterly lost in the noise all around, the words meant only for herself and one long gone. “If you just stay alive, surely…” 

There are circles under Nami’s eyes, bandages wrapped tight around her hand and her shoulder, and she’s laughing. There are tears running in warm tracks down Nojiko’s cheeks, and she’s not sure when she started crying, or when she started smiling, but she couldn’t stop either even if she wanted to. 

_Surely, good things will come._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 13: joy. i made myself cry writing this! never be over the arlong park emotions


	130. hiyori + grim

Kyoshirou’s eyes are grim in the morning, and Komurasaki knows at once that something ugly has happened in the night. She always knows. He looks out for her constantly; it’s the least she can do to do the same for him, in what little ways she can manage. 

So midday when neither of them are needed elsewhere, she finds him and pulls him aside to a secluded corner room of the yuukaku where they won’t be overheard, a place where they do not need to be Kyoshirou and Komurasaki. 

“What happened?” she asks, sitting against the wall at his side, knees tucked up to her chest, leaning against his shoulder. It’s a level of casual informality that would be unthinkable for Komurasaki, but she isn’t Komurasaki right now; she’s Hiyori, who is nineteen and lonely and so very tired and speaking to the one person in the world she trusts, so it’s alright. 

It’s a moment before he answers, but she doesn’t doubt for a second that he will, nor that it will be the truth when he does. 

(They are always honest with each other. They need to be; there’s nobody else. She worries if she didn’t have him to talk to, she might have lost track of herself entirely by now, Kouzuki Hiyori smothered to death under the silks and smiles of Komurasaki.) 

“There was a minor uprising,” he says at last, voice heavy. “In Hakumai. A small town banded together, managed to steal some weapons from some careless men of Kaidou’s. A pair of Headliners were dispatched to… deal with it.” A pause. “They burned the town to the ground, with the people locked inside their homes.” 

It’s more or less what she expected. It doesn’t make it any easier to hear. “How many?” 

“I don’t think-”

“ _How many,_ Denjirou?” 

He sighs. “About thirty. The town was already mostly dead. They… didn’t have anything left to lose.” 

She swallows. “I see,” she says after a moment.

What neither of them say but both of them know is this: that could be them, eventually, if they had just a little less hope and a little more desperation. What will become of them, if the twenty year mark comes and goes with no promised homecoming? What will they do, with nothing left to wait for and nothing left to lose? What will she do?

She doesn’t know.

(But she knows where her father’s swords are kept, and she knows she could get near enough to Orochi, at least, to take his head before opening her own throat.)

Here and now, though, there are people dead, hopeless and desperate and abandoned by those who were supposed to protect them, and even if Wano is liberated tomorrow they will still be dead, together with her mother and father and all the thousands more who’ve perished under Orochi’s rule, and so Hiyori cries. 

She always cries, when things like this happen, because someone has to. He doesn’t. She thinks maybe it’s because if he started now, he’d never stop.

Denjirou doesn’t say anything, because they both know there are no words that could ever make this better, but he stays steady at her side, rubs her back with a gentle hand as she mourns. It’s not enough, not really, but it’s all that can be done, and it helps. 

Seven years to go. 

She doesn’t know how much more of this she can take. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 14: grim. i'm honestly very proud of this one.


	131. roger + twinkle

“ _No,_ ” Rayleigh says, emphatic in the way that means he knows he’s the last line of defense against the latest idea Roger has gotten in his head.

Roger grins over at him. “What?” 

“You have that look. No.” 

“What look?” 

Rayleigh levels him with a flatly unimpressed look. “That twinkle in your eye that says you’re about to do something _monumentally_ stupid. _No._ ” 

“You don’t even know what I was going to say!” 

“I _do!_ We are _not_ taking them with us!” Rayleigh says, gesturing emphatically at the two children still sitting on the deck where Gaban had dropped them after hauling them up from their hiding place in the hold. The blue-haired one looks caught somewhere between sullenness and terror; the redhead looks a little angry, but mostly excited. “They’re _babies_. How old are you?” he snaps, shifting his glare to the kids. 

“ _Hey_ ,” the redhead says, barely flinching at the full force of Rayleigh’s scowl, and Roger grins wider. They’ll fit right in. “We’re _nine_.” 

Rayleigh buries his face in his hands for a moment. “ _Seas_. We’re turning the ship around. Roger, turn the ship around. We’re taking them back.” 

“You can’t do that!” the blue-haired one complains. 

“You’re _stowaways_ , we’ll do whatever we want!” Rayleigh bites out. “What kind of _idiot children_ \- on a _pirate ship of all things_ -“ 

“Hey, _I’m_ the captain, I make the choices,” Roger objects. “Don’t see why we can’t keep them on board. We could use a cabin boy or two.” 

Rayleigh is pointedly ignoring him, still glaring down at the children with his arms crossed. “Where are your parents? Do they know where you are?” 

Neither boy answers, this time. The redhead glances away; the blue-haired one glares down at the deck. It says all they need to know, really, and Roger sees something infinitesimal soften in Rayleigh’s face and knows he’s won. Hardened and fearsome pirate his first mate may be, but he’s always been just a little soft for kids. 

(Not that Roger is any better, but at least he admits it.)

Roger crouches down, props his elbows on his legs. “What’re your names?” 

“I’m Shanks,” the redhead says, then jerks a thumb at the other boy, who’s still glaring a hole in the deck. “This’s Buggy.” 

Roger grins, and knows that look Rayleigh hates is in his eyes again. 

“And you two wanna be pirates, do you?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promptober day 15: twinkle! it's a long-held headcanon of mine that shanks and buggy started off as stowaways.


	132. ace + sunshine

It was overcast, the day the Pirate King died. 

The sky over Loguetown was filled horizon-to-horizon with heavy grey clouds, swollen with rain, too thick for any sunshine to eke its fragile way through. A few watchers cast anxious gazes upwards, but most had eyes only for the execution platform.

The words were spoken, shaking the world to its core, turning an end into an infinite beginning. The blades fell. 

The sky cracked open, and the rain poured down. 

( _Even the Pirate King’s death called a storm_ , some might say, far away on Mariejois. _Isn’t that just like a D?_ )

The sky over Marineford is clear and blue and cloudless, the sunshine beaming down so bright that the clean white uniforms of the men lined up and ready for war almost hurt to look at. It glitters on the waves that stretch to the horizon, turning the ocean jewel-blue. 

The seastone cuffs are heavy and chafing around his wrists, and his knees ache from kneeling. But at least it’s bright, and at least it’s warm. 

At least this is one thing Ace has that Roger didn’t, one stroke of luck in his miserable life. 

At least he’ll die in sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the friend who prompted this was like "this was supposed to be a happy prompt" to which i replied that all ace prompts can be made sad very easily


	133. leo + massive

“ _Wow!_ ” Leo gasped, tilting his head back to look up at the monument in all its glory. 

Rebecca, whose shoulder he was perched on for a better view, giggled, pressing a hand to her mouth. “Impressive, right?”

“Yeah!” Leo chirped, eyes wide. The three statues stood in a triangle in the town square, looming massive and larger than life over the slowly-healing city- God Usopp, Lucy, and Kyros. Dressrosa’s guardians. 

“Father didn’t want one,” Rebecca confided, shooting him a grin. “He said he didn’t deserve it. Aunt Viola and I overruled him.” 

“I wish we could show them,” Leo said, bouncing a little in place in his seat on her shoulder. “The pirates. Usoland _said_ he was gonna become our legendary hero, and then he _did_. He should know we’re gonna remember him forever!” 

Rebecca looked up at the Lucy statue, smiled soft and fond and grateful. 

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said. “I’m sure he knows.”


	134. brulee + travel

Brulee does not travel.

Oh, short distances, certainly; room to room, island to island. Thanks to her Devil Fruit, the whole of Tottoland may as well be her backyard, and she makes good use of that, surveyor and guardian of her mother’s lands. But she hasn’t left the archipelago itself, ventured out into the vast and unknown ocean, in decades. 

It’s almost strange, when she stops to think about it. She’s an officer of the Big Mom Pirates, isn’t she? She’s a pirate, at least in theory. But pirates are adventurers, conquerors, _travelers_. In all her years, she’s never once felt like one. 

That’s fine, though. She’s never longed for that life, for travel and adventure. If she had to choose, she’d always choose to be here, in Tottoland, standing guard behind her mirrors and looking after her family. 

(This has always been something she has in common with her favorite older brother.)

She has a fortress, here, a world of shortcuts and mirrors, an entire dimension under her control to be used for the good of her family and her home- 

A place where she’s safe. 

No, she wouldn’t like traveling, she thinks. The thought of leaving her palace of checkerboards and mirrors, of venturing out into the world, small and alone and _vulnerable_ , makes an old and long-buried kind of terror stir in her stomach, the kind that brings her right back to when she was five years old and pinned to the ground, shaking too badly to scream as the knife descended. 

No. Better to stay home, stay safe, stay standing guard, pacing her corridors of mirrors and keeping careful watch through every window.

Better to stay home, and never let anyone hurt her again.


	135. law + steps

Law is not a miracle worker. 

This was the very first lesson he ever learned about his powers; the first and the most painful, written in Cora-san’s blood as it stained the snow red, as he tried and failed to work miracles with shaking hands. He cannot do the impossible.

His hands are not shaking now. A surgeon’s hands cannot shake, not when he’s wrist-deep in viscera, even as the Polar Tang rocks around him, the floor tilting sharply side to side as they dodge around spears of light and dive ever deeper into the waiting embrace of the ocean. He leaves the escape to his crew, shuts the panic all around him out of his mind, and stares down at the carnage Akainu’s made of Strawhat’s chest. 

The damage is extensive, as are the burns. He can’t just fix it all at once. He’ll have to take it step by step. Compartmentalize; focus. What’s most important? What’ll kill his patient first? The blood loss, probably, if it isn’t shock- the damage to his organs is bad but not as bad as the sheer trauma to his major arteries- 

_Everything_ needs fixing, here, and the urgency burns in the back of his skull and in the pads of his fingertips, but he can’t rush. Time is a doctor’s greatest enemy. A surgeon _can’t_ rush, can’t do anything but reach into the jaws of death and steal every second of time required to do the thing right.

(One of his mother’s sayings, probably. It sounds like something she’d say. He can’t remember.) 

Law’s known since before he was ready to know that death isn’t kind or fair or reasonable, but still he can’t help but feel it’s not right, for this kid who stops wars and topples gods to end here, lying too still and too small on the cold steel of his table. Lucky for the both of them, then, that he’s been in the business of defying death since he was ten years old. 

There are no miracles here. All Law has are his hands, his hands and his operating room, dancing blue around fingers that do not shake.

It’ll have to be enough. 


	136. kureha + summer

“Doctorine?” Chopper’s small voice asked, and Kureha glanced up from her book to look over at him. 

He was _meant_ to be sorting and shelving her old journals, but had apparently abandoned the task to gaze out the window next to the bookshelf, hooves resting on the windowsill. It was a rare cloudless day on Drum, for once, the sky an endless expanse of cold clear blue.

“What?” she asked, a little irritably.

“What’s summer like?” 

“Hm.” She capped her pen, swung her chair around to look at him fully. His eyes were big with fascination, focused out the window at the cloudless sky. “Why do you ask?” 

“Just wondering,” he said. “It sounds nice.” 

“Hmph. Maybe if you like sweating your skin off. You’d hate it, with that coat of yours. I suppose it can be pretty, now and then… you see a lot of green, on summer islands. Lot of flowers, too- lots more color than we get here.” 

He was quiet for a moment, then, just as she was about to give the question up as answered and the conversation finished: “Like cherry blossoms?” 

Ah. The old fool’s ideas in her student’s head, yet again. 

“No,” she said bluntly. Before his face could fall and make her feel _guilty_ or anything, she added, “Cherry blossoms are _spring_. End of winter, start of summer. In some cultures, they mean rebirth, the start of a new year and new life, or whatever symbolic nonsense.”

She scoffed, turning her chair back around and tapping pen to page once more. “Silly, if you ask me,” she said. “Acting like life can only come when summer does. Like the strongest things aren’t born in winter.” 

(Her apprentice was proof of that.) 


	137. conis + wind

“I don’t trust this,” Raki said, looking at the waver with plain apprehension. 

“It’ll be fine! I told you, it’s fun,” Conis said, stepping aboard and glancing back at her. 

Raki hesitated, then cautiously picked her way over and stepped onto the waver behind her. Conis shifted forward to make room, letting the other woman wrap her arms tight around her middle. 

“Ready?”

Raki nodded, tightening her grip, and Conis squeezed the handles to start the engine. 

The waver roared into motion at once, shooting out across the endless expanse of cloud, the world blurring into blue and white around them. Behind her, Raki made an uncharacteristically undignified squeaking sound and buried her face in Conis’s shoulder, fingers clutching at the fabric of her shirt. 

Conis cut her speed to nothing immediately, bringing them to a slightly uneven almost-stop, and glanced back. “Too fast?” she asked, feeling a little guilty. 

Raki glanced away and pressed her lips together, looking embarrassed. “Just… unexpected,” she said, grip still locked vice-tight around Conis’s chest. “I’ve never ridden one of these before, I told you. I’m just- you’re _sure_ this is safe?” 

“I’m sure!” Conis promised. “My father taught me how to ride a waver when I was eight, and I’ve never had so much as an accident on one. So long as you know what you’re doing, they’re perfectly safe.” 

Raki looked doubtfully down at the clouds all around their feet. “I think I’ll always feel safest with vearth beneath my feet.” 

“Well, we can have a picnic in the Upper Yard after, how about that?” Conis suggested, flashing a smile over her shoulder. “Just one more shot. I’ll go slower this time, I promise. Once you’re used to it, it feels like _flying_.” 

“…Alright,” Raki conceded, readjusting her grip. “Go.” 

Conis grinned and started the engine up again, and the waver rocked into motion once more, smoother and slower this time, coasting across the cloudscape. The sun was brilliant in the sky, the wind blowing her hair back. 

Just like flying. 


	138. koala + stories

When she steps up onto the deck and into the nighttime ocean air, still rubbing tears out of her eyes, the first thing she sees is Fighter Tiger’s silhouette at the bow, and she almost retreats back belowdecks immediately. 

She doesn’t… she doesn’t want to bother him. She doesn’t want to bother _anyone_ \- even if belowdecks is too cramped and too dark with too many bodies around and sometimes when she wakes up for a moment she’s _right back_ -

She draws a sharp breath, holds it in her lungs to keep from losing control of her breathing. She closes her eyes and counts to ten before she exhales, and when she opens them again, he’s looking at her. 

She freezes. 

“…Koala?” he says after a moment, soft in the nighttime air. “Is… everything alright?” 

“Fine,” she says, too quickly, the word tripping off her tongue before she can even think to stop it. 

His expression is hard to read, in the darkness and shifting shadows and faint glow of moonlight, but she thinks he might frown at that. Before she can have time to panic ( _she made him mad made him mad made him mad_ ), he turns the rest of the way around to look at her, beckons with one hand. There’s no anger in his posture, no frustration, and it chases a little of the habitual fear back out of her throat so she can breathe again. 

“Come here,” he says, and it’s not an order, not really, so she does, crossing the deck to his side on careful, quiet feet. “Is it alright if I pick you up?”

She nods, a little jerky, and he bends down and picks her up, setting her gently on the figurehead. She gasps a little in surprise, flattening her hands against the wood and leaning forward almost instinctively to see the ocean spread out below and before her. 

It’s the dead of night and the ocean is still and the sky is clear, and the dark water is glittering with stars. 

Fisher Tiger leans against the rail at her side, following her gaze out to sea. “This is my favorite sight,” he says. “I’ve seen it so many times, but it never gets old.” 

She doesn’t have anything to say to that, but she doesn’t think he’s expecting her to. The silence that falls is comfortable, as she looks out at the starry water and lets it wash away the darkness and terror still lingering behind her eyes. The painted wood of the figurehead is cool and solid beneath her hands, grounding and reassuring. 

“Captain?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper, barely audible above the nighttime ocean wind. “You’ve been to a lot of islands, right?” 

“Mmm,” he hums. “More than I can count.”

“…Nice places?”

“Some of them.” 

“Will you… um,” she starts, stumbling over her words, heart thumping in her chest. “Would you- tell me? Please? About… some nice places?” 

He’s quiet for a moment, and the shadows hide his face so she can’t see his expression. She bites her lip hard, suddenly ashamed, and is opening her mouth to apologize when:

“…Yes. I think I can do that,” he says, and there’s something in his voice she can’t place. “Why don’t I start with the island where I’m from?” 

She nods, and settles in to listen, and as he starts to weave a story of an underwater paradise, brightly colored and not-quite-sunlit, slowly, little by little, the shadows of Mariejois begin to fade away.


	139. sabo + entwined

“Sabo, Sabo, Sabo, wait up!” a familiar voice called, accompanied by the patter of flip-flops against the forest floor, and a moment later a small hand closed around his.

Sabo grinned down at his little brother, bright and broken-toothed. “Heya, Luffy.” 

Luffy grinned back. “Heya, Sabo!” he said right back, swinging their linked hands between them, fingers twining together in that boneless kind of way specific to his little brother. “Where’re you going?” 

Sabo feigned a thoughtful look. “I don’t know, can you keep a secret?” 

Luffy gave him a hilariously affronted look. “Course I can!” 

“ _Can_ you, though?” Sabo pressed, mostly teasing. Luffy _could_ usually be trusted to keep secrets, so long as he wasn’t asked about them directly, or he wasn’t prompted to think about them by some other current topic of conversation, or-

“I _can!_ ” Luffy insisted, entirely sincere.

Sabo _hmm-_ ed a little. “Alright. I guess I could use some help, anyways,” he conceded, grinning. “I _was_ havin’ some trouble coming up with ideas.”

“Ideas?”

“It’s Makino’s _birthday_ in a couple days,” Sabo explained. “Dadan mentioned it last time she was up visiting us. So I wanted to go lookin’ for somethin’ to give her.”

Luffy gasped, an excited bounce slipping into his step. “A birthday present? A birthday present _hunt?_ ” 

“Yeah! She doesn’t have lotsa nice stuff, right? I was thinking maybe the jewelry shops in Edge Town might have something good. You in?” 

Luffy nodded eagerly. “Yeah!” 

His hand tightened in Sabo’s, fingers entwined, swinging a little back and forth. Sabo smiled, feeling softer than he might have felt possible, once upon a time, and squeezed Luffy’s hand back. 

(When he woke up, his hands were cold.)


	140. katakuri + gloves

The gloves, like every other aspect of Katakuri’s carefully-maintained appearance and image and life, are there for a reason. 

His littler siblings whisper and wonder about it, as they do about every little oddity; he hears them, sometimes. Even four decades on, it feels almost like a novelty, to hear voices whisper about him in awe and wonder instead of fear and laughing disgust. He wishes he could enjoy it, wishes he could trust that their tones wouldn’t turn in an instant if they knew the truth, but he knows he can’t.

That’s fine. He’s never had much room for wishing, anyways.

He does smile, though, sometimes, behind his scarf, when he hears what they have to say, their wild guesses. _Big Brother Katakuri wears gloves so that the blood from his victories doesn’t splatter his hands_ , they murmur. _Otherwise it would get so messy, when he snaps necks and crushes skulls!_

Well, they’re not wrong, in a way. It is about the mess, a little, he supposes. 

He’s always had the _hardest_ time getting powdered sugar out from under his fingernails. 


	141. usopp + space

Usopp bounced the ball in his hand, and considered. The bar was low-lit and dingy in that way that pirate bars often were, but the sightlines were decent enough, the room only a little crowded, which made this easier. Fewer moving people to account for was always better.

The bar, the tables, the mirror at the bartender’s back, the walls, the empty stools, the mug- 

“Okay,” he said aloud, mostly to calm his own nerves, “I can do this.”

He threw the ball, hard.

It hit the bar first, at an angle, spinning a little with the force of the downwards throw, and shot up to ricochet off the bar-back mirror. From there it bounced up to the ceiling, still carrying its momentum, whirling a little to the side; bounced almost straight down onto an empty barstool; flew up again from there, hitting a high peak before bouncing back down to the bar, losing most of its momentum on the way; and a final little bounce into the waiting tankard of ale. 

For a moment, there was quiet. Then-

“ _Ha!_ ” Nami shrieked, slapping a triumphant hand down on the bar,leaning right up into the face of the burly pirate still staring stunned at the rubber ball floating in his drink. “I told you he could do it! Five bounces and then straight in! _Pay up!_ ”

“There’s no way,” the pirate said. “You _cheated_.” 

“I didn’t-” Usopp started to protest, holding his hands up, but Nami got there first, suddenly all teeth. 

“ _You_ set the rules, remember?“ she said, menacing for all she was half the pirate’s size. “You chose the target _and_ the number of hits. _How_ could we have cheated?”

The pirate flinched, then scowled to cover it, dark and menacing. Nami didn’t even blink, and after a moment he glanced away, slapped a handful of glittering gold coins down on the bar with enough force to make the old wood creak, and stormed out of the bar. 

Usopp could finally exhale. “I _really_ wish you’d stop using me to win bets,” he said, without any heat.

Nami grinned, running delighted fingers over the coins. “It’s a reliable source of income!” she said brightly. “Besides, it doesn’t cost _you_ anything.”

“My _nerves_ , maybe?”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby.” 

He rolled his eyes and huffed, but didn’t argue the point any further. He reached over to grab the pirate’s abandoned tankard instead, fished his rubber ball out of the lukewarm beer, and took a drink. 

(If there’s one thing piracy in general and Nami in particular have taught him, it’s that free is free.)

“Hey,” Nami said. “How _do_ you do that, really?”

He blinked, glanced over at her. “What?”

“The whole-“ she waved a hand at the bar around them, the empty stool and the bar-back mirror, the ball still sitting by his hand. “That.”

“Oh. Um- it’s really not that hard?” he said, glancing up at the bar ceiling and tapping his fingers thoughtfully against the bar. “It’s just… objects in space, I guess? Paying attention to where stuff is relative to everything else, and where you want something to go, and what’s the best way to get it there. It’s- really not hard.” 

“Bullshit. I couldn’t do it,” she said bluntly. “And I don’t think anybody else on our crew could, either. But hey,” she said, and grinned, bumping his shoulder with hers. “That’s why you’re our sniper, right?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen to me usopp must have absolutely BONKERS spacial awareness he just doesn't realize it because of his crappy self esteem


	142. reiju + solitude

The music sings, high and smooth, over the twisted towers and sheer walls of the Germa Kingdom. The bow seesaws back and forth across the violin’s strings, drawing sound into the dead and silent air. There is no birdsong in the Germa Kingdom, nothing else to fill the quiet. 

Solitude is easy, for Reiju.

After all, anything can be easy, eventually, with enough practice, and Reiju is an old, old hand at loneliness. She’s used to the hollow echoing of her footsteps down the empty corridors of the palace, used to meals eaten in stony silence and endless hours spent alone in her room. 

She has to fill it somehow, fill the echoing silences and the empty hours and the space inside her head or else she thinks she’d lose her mind, and so she plays.

The violin was stolen. She’d found it in a noblewoman’s bedroom, an instrument of the finest craftsmanship, hanging on a wall beneath a thick layer of dust. It plainly hadn’t been played in years, and in a split-second moment of rare selfish interest, she’d snatched it from its place before making her escape out the window. 

Learning had been an adventure of trial and error, novel in its difficulty. It had been so very long since she’d been allowed to be bad at _anything_ , since she’d had the freedom to _fail_. Her father would never tolerate anything less than perfection when it came to what he deemed important, but with something as worthless and trivial in her father’s eye’s as music- there, at least, she can find room to breathe.

In this, she envies her little brother. She glimpses that moment of freedom, ethereal as smoke and just as fast to dissipate, and wonders if that’s how he feels all the time.

(She hopes so.) 

She’ll never have that, that bright and reckless freedom, but it’s alright. She’s made her peace with solitude, has for years and years now. 

The violin sings out into the silence, high and sad and lonely, and she can almost imagine it’s birdsong. 


	143. isuka + mask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter features the characters deuce and isuka who, while technically canon? are from novel a rather than the manga. it probably won't make sense if you don't know who they are.

He’s not wearing the mask, and so Isuka almost doesn’t recognize him. Almost walks right past him, until the hair and the coat and the battered journal tucked in his jacket pocket catch in the corner of her vision, puzzle pieces coming together all at once, and she stops midstep and turns around to stare. 

He looks up and meets her eyes. She’s never seen his face, before. 

He looks younger, without the mask. She realizes, all at once, that she doesn’t know how old he is. Ace had only been twenty. He looks like he can’t be much older than that, now that she can see clearly. 

She’s half-expecting anger, but instead he just looks exhausted and sad, and it burns in her chest and sticks in her throat like anger never could. It makes her want to run and hide like the scared little girl she swore she’d never be again. 

She sits down on the bench next to him, instead. 

He glances over at her, then away. “Isuka.” His voice is a little rougher than she’s used to hearing it, from crying or drink or both. 

She sighs. “De-“ 

“Don’t.” 

She blinks, caught momentarily off guard by the interruption. “What?”

“Don’t call me that. Okay? I’m not...” he trails off, sighs. “You know what it means? Deuce? It’s the second playing card in a deck. Aces, deuces.”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s not sure if she could, even if she could find the words; her whole mouth’s gone dry. 

“It’s not my- my birth name. He gave it to me. And I decided I’d follow him for the rest of my life,” he says, and makes an ugly, choked noise that might have been a laugh if it didn’t sound so painful.

“I’m sorry,” she says, because she is, because there’s nothing else to say. 

He nods, doesn’t say anything in response. She can’t say she expected him to. They sit in silence for a moment, so thick and heavy with words unspoken she feels like she can’t breathe through it.

“Your coat,” he says at last. “You’re not wearing it.”

Oh. It’s the first time he’s seen her without it, isn’t it? She swallows. “I left the marines.” 

It’s the first thing she says to provoke an actual response from him- surprise flashes across his face, quickly buried. “You…?” 

She bites her lip, glares down at the cobblestones. “It’s not... I couldn’t. Not under Sakazuki. Not anymore. I joined the marines to _help_ people. What happened there... that wasn’t...” 

The words stick, piling up in her throat: _wasn’t justice, wasn’t right, wasn’t what I wanted, was never what I wanted._

“So what are you doing now?” 

She shrugs one shoulder, looks away. “I’m not really sure.”

“Ha. Me too. I was with the Whitebeard Remnants for awhile, but.” He doesn’t elaborate beyond that, but he doesn’t need to; the whole world knows about the Payback War, after all. 

“You’re not wearing your mask,” she says.

“I started wearing it when I set out to sea,” he says. “I don’t- I’m not a pirate anymore. I’m not _anyone_ , anymore. I’m just…” he trails off, brings a hand absently to the battered journal sticking out of his pocket, and she remembers a conversation, years and miles back, about his dream. “Just getting the rest of it down. The ending.” 

It occurs to her that, her without her coat and him without his mask, they must look like a normal pair of friends, sitting like this, side-by-side, talking. She could almost believe it herself, if not for the weight of the ghost lingering between them.

“What a pair we make, huh?” he says, a little wry, like his thoughts are running down just the same path as hers.

She chuckles, just a little, tired and sad. “Yeah.” 

A marine without a rank and a pirate without a crew. What a pair they make, indeed. 

“Hey,” she says, suddenly, impulsively. “Do you… um. Want to stick together? Just for a little while. Until you’ve finished that book of yours.” 

It’s a dumb thing to say. She knows it is. She’s not a marine anymore, but she was; he’s not a pirate anymore, but he was, and once a pirate, always a pirate. But there’s a ghost sitting between them, and she’s lonely and aimless and so is he, and so the offer trips off her tongue before she can even really think about it.

He gives her an incredulous look that softens, after a moment. “Isuka,” he says, sounding amused for the first time since they’ve been talking. “Are you asking me to join your crew?” 

“I don’t have a crew,” she says. “I’d just… like to read it, I think. When it’s done.” 

It feels like the least she can do, really, to know his story now he’s gone.

He looks at her for a long, long moment, and then he nods, just a little. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.” 


	144. noland + wave

The waves lap against the shore, steady and rhythmic. The tide is just beginning to recede, now, pulling out as the sun sets, splashing the ocean’s surface with gold. 

“I can’t imagine it,” Calgara says, blunt as he always is. They’re sitting side by side, the two of them. Neither of them likes to rest for long- just one of the many things they have in common- but the day’s work was long and arduous, so they’ve earned at least a few minutes to sit, to watch the waves and the sunset. 

Noland glances over at him. “Hm?” 

“Sailing. The…” he trails off, makes a rocking side-to-side motion with one hand, lips twisting in distaste. “The thought makes me feel ill. I like the solid ground beneath my feet.” 

Noland chuckles. “Some people do,” he says. “Get ill, I mean. It’s to do with the motion of the waves, and the feeling of the ship rocking all around you. We call it seasickness. Normally it fades once you get your sea legs under you, but some of my men still suffer it now and then when we hit a particularly bad storm.” 

Calgara frowns. “Why would you go to sea at all if it makes you sick?” he asks. “You have a home island, I know, you’ve told me about it. Is it so bad?” 

“No, our home island is a fine place,” Noland says absently. “It’s just… _boring_. The sea is wild, and dangerous, and yes, sometimes it’ll even make you sick, but- it’s also the only way to reach the horizon. There’s _so many_ islands like this out there, so many new peoples and wondrous places to be discovered. Braving the ocean is _nothing_ compared to the feeling of making landfall on an unmapped island.” 

“Hm.” Calgara is still frowning, eyes fixed on the point where the sunset orange sky meets the ocean. “I don’t think I could do that.” 

“Why not?” 

He shrugs. “I couldn’t leave Jaya. I need to be here, to look after my people. If I were to leave… I can’t look to the horizon like you explorers do. I’d always be looking back over my shoulder.” 

“I wouldn’t have pinned you for a worrier,” Noland says, smiling a little. 

“I’m not,” Calgara objects. “I’m a _guardian_. For my people, for our culture. If I left, I would be abandoning my duty.” A pause. “And besides. I _don’t_ want to get sick.” 

“There _are_ ways to deal with seasickness, you know,” Noland says, grinning. “The one I always tell my men is to fix your eyes on the horizon. Seasickness comes from the motion of the boat and the waves, but the horizon never moves- it’s a constant. Stare at it long enough, and everything else goes away.” 

“Is that what happened to you?” Calgara asks, one eyebrow raised skeptically. “Stared at the ocean long enough and forgot everything else?” 

Noland laughs. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe. But it brought me here, didn’t it?” 


	145. katakuri + wrath

Brulee is bleeding, and all Katakuri can see is the _red_. 

The memory of the rusty stain sticks to the inside of his eyes long after it’s bandaged up and hidden, standing out stark and ugly every time he closes his eyes. The doctors talk to them, speaking in low voices about how it will heal, but not without scarring. 

Katakuri doesn’t hear them. He doesn’t hear anything, really, except Brulee’s labored, pained breathing and the endless feedback loop of her last words before she slipped off into a haze of painkillers and exhaustion: _perfect just the way you are, just the way you are, the way you are-_

She looks very small in the bed, face wrapped in clean white bandages. Katakuri’s baby sister. 

She’s only five. 

His ears are ringing. 

She’s only five, and he can only see _red_. There’s something in his chest, freezing and cracking all at once, shards of ice shoving through his veins and tearing at his skin. His hands are clenching at his sides, useless fury tightening his fingers, and he needs to get out of this room before he _kills_ someone. 

Wrath is filling up his lungs, and he can barely _breathe_ though it as he shoves Oven out of the way and storms out the door, slamming it into the wall so hard he hears wood splinter. He doesn’t know where he’s going, other than _away_ from the tortured soundtrack of Brulee’s breathing and the sight of her tiny body in the bed.

Eventually he’ll scrape together enough sense to find his trident, and go out hunting. 

For now, though, there’s nothing in his mind at all but red. 


	146. laboon + change

The ocean does not change. It is ever-moving, ever-shifting, the currents and corals and waves, but it does not _change_. It is ever deep, and ever blue, and ever endless. The Red Line, likewise, doesn’t change. It stands eternal, stretching from the seafloor through the clouds, an implacable and endless wall in bright bloody red. 

The ocean doesn’t change, and the Red Line doesn’t change, and so much of Laboon’s world is static, each day’s landscape identical to the last. Time moves, but in a sneaky, unnoticeable way, sliding by like water. 

Crocus, though. Crocus changes. 

It’s a slow sort of changing, but as the years wear on and on and on, Crocus gets older. His eyes get heavier, his steady hands start to tremble, just a little, as the wrinkles in his face multiply and deepen. 

He doesn’t understand it, not really, the way Crocus’s steps get a little slower and his hair gets a little lighter year by year by year, but it’s frightening.

Laboon understands growth, understands that once he was much smaller than he now is. He remembers, once upon a long-ago time, looking _up_ at Crocus instead of down (and even before that, looking up at other friends, faces and names now foggy with time). 

_Age_ is a more difficult concept. 


	147. shakky + teatime

She goes every week, like clockwork. Every Sunday afternoon, three PM, Shakky tucks the weekly newspaper under her arm, sets a fresh pot of tea and two empty cups on a tray, closes up the bar, and goes to take her teatime. 

It’s a tradition; one only a few months old, perhaps, but a tradition nonetheless. A lady has to fill her time _somehow_ while her husband is off having far too much fun kicking the principles of haki into a teenager’s head, after all. 

She crests the hill, and the ship and its guardian come into view, unchanged and unmoving. 

She smiles. “Good afternoon, Kuma-san,” she says, making her way over to his side. He doesn’t respond, or even acknowledge her presence at all, but then he never does. 

She sits down beside him in moss wet with seaspray and bubble-sap, folding her legs neatly beneath her, and sets to work filling the pair of cups with steaming black tea. 

He never touches his, of course, but- 

Shakky remembers three little girls, scarred and shaking and wrists still red from shackles, and she knows at least this much: people never stop being people, no matter what’s been done to them. 

So she always tells him good afternoon, and she always smiles, and she always pours him tea. 

She takes a long sip from her own cup, savoring the heat and bitter sweetness of it, before she speaks. “Still no word about the kids,” she says. “Luffy is still off with Ray-san, of course. Oh, but I did hear a rumor the other day that Nico Robin may be working with the Revolutionary Army, now.” 

No reaction, of course, as always. She doesn’t let herself be disappointed, even if she’d hoped- well. No point, is there? 

She doesn’t even know if he hears her. She doesn’t even know if he knows she’s there at all. But she knows he’s a friend, and he’s doing them a hell of a favor without asking anything in return, and it wouldn’t be right, would it, to just leave him all alone? 

Everybody needs some company, now and again. 

She stays until her cup is empty and his is cold, sharing tidbits about the ever-changing state of the world and anecdotes about the most interesting customers of the past week. Once the words have run dry and the teapot’s gone cool to the touch, she sighs, and stands, and smiles again. 

“See you next week, Kuma-san,” she says. “Look after yourself.” 

He doesn’t say goodbye, but then he never does. 

She’ll be back next week, even so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm permanently sad about kuma


	148. pudding + picky

_I’ve always wondered what my husband would be like_ , Pudding told the Strawhats once, and unlike every other word that slipped from her lips like poisoned sugar, it wasn’t even a lie. 

She’d always been a bitter sort of romantic, at heart. It was hard not to be, when one grew up in a house of song and twisted fairytale, of grand gestures and grander weddings. It was hard not to dream, just a little; to hope, just a little, even when she knew there would never be a perfect day and a happy ending. Not for her. 

(Monsters didn’t get happy endings.)

When she was younger and less broken, there had been sleepovers with her sisters, whispering and giggling and gossiping late into the night, describing their ideal husbands, spinning stories of princes handsome and dashing and tall. What would he look like? Who would he be? Would he be rich, would he be funny, would he be smart?

Pudding had smiled and laughed along like she was so good at doing, agreed that he needed to be handsome, needed to be strong, tossed out opinions on hair and eyes and the absolute _necessity_ of good teeth. 

What she never, ever said was: _I don’t care, really, what he looks like, whether he’s smart, who his family is. If he can look at me and smile, I think that would be enough._

She was never really picky. She only ever dreamed of someone kind. 

At least, until she gave up on dreaming at all. 


	149. luffy + distraction

Law is sitting on the rail, watching the ocean, half-wishing he had a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke with any regularity, but now and then when his thoughts drift back to memory he finds his fingers twitching for one. It’s the comfort, maybe. Cora-san’s stupid feather coat always smelled like smoke. 

“ _Torao!_ ” an awfully familiar voice calls, and a moment later a hand attached to a stretched-out arm latches onto his elbow, jarring him out of his reverie. He has just enough presence of mind to grab hold of the railing with his other hand before Luffy’s entire body weight crashes into him, knocking them both neatly off the side of the boat.

The effort of catching them both nearly wrenches his wrist, and as they’re dangling off the railing above the ocean that hates them both, only supported by Law’s hand locked around the railing, Luffy giggling like he isn’t inches away from a watery grave, Law considers how used to this he’s gotten, and then considers just letting go.

He doesn’t, of course, but it’s tempting.

Instead he hisses _room_ and _shambles_ and drops them clumsily back on the deck, a little wet from seaspray but otherwise unharmed, and hopes nobody was particularly attached to those deck chairs. 

“What the _fuck_ , Strawhat-ya,” he says. 

Luffy pulls himself up to sit cross-legged, and grins. “You looked sad!” 

“I- _so you decided to nearly kill us both?_ ” 

Luffy just shrugs a little. “Well, you’re not sad anymore, are you?” 

He’s not, but only because he’s annoyed now instead, and he’s not sure if that really counts. 

“Oh!” Luffy says, brightening like he just remembered something. “Robin wanted to talk to you! She had some questions about, uh… science stuff? I forget the word she used. Circle… circus…” 

“Circulatory?” Law guesses. 

“Yeah, that thing!” Luffy beams, bouncing to his feet and grabbing Law’s wrist to tug him along. “C’mon, let’s go find her!” 

_C’mon, Law, let’s go!_

And Law sighs, and carefully doesn’t smile, and goes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a not-insignificant number of my luffy prompts wind up being from other people's points of view... i think its bc its a lot easier to write about luffy in terms of the effect he has on the ppl around him


	150. oden + play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wano spoilers i guess but also this is literally just a stupid joke

“Don’t,” Inuarashi said, folding his arms and trying to look as stern as possible. It wasn’t very effective. It was mostly just cute. Oden was a little tempted to coo. “I’m _serious!_ ” 

“Uh-huh,” Oden said absently, bouncing the stick in his hand a little. He didn’t miss the way Inuarashi’s head bobbed a little along with it, intently focused no matter how he pretended not to be. He grinned. 

“The minks are a proud warrior race! Just because we _look_ like animals to your untrained eyes doesn’t mean we’re obligated to _act_ like them, and we're _certainly_ not about to play-" 

“Right, right,” Oden agreed, drew his arm back, and threw the stick. “ _Fetch!_ ” 


	151. jinbe + free

Jinbe is free. 

(Isn’t he?) 

He counts himself lucky, in that. He never had to bear the heavy chains that Fisher Tiger and so many more of his crewmates and kinsfolk were forced into, and the only brand he’s ever born was one he chose, one he still wears with pride. 

Jinbe is free, because he has the freedom to choose his chains: _captain, protector, warlord, subordinate_ , the responsibilities that weigh so very heavy around his wrists and ankles. He wears them dutifully, nonetheless. What’s the point of strength, if you aren’t using it to shoulder what others can’t?

He’s always assumed that was the most he could hope for. 

Tiger and Otohime died bloody and before their times, and left their dreams behind, and it wasn’t like he could just let them _fall_ , let them shatter into pieces and fade into obscurity. He doesn’t think he could bear that. They had died and he had lived, so it was the least he could do. 

(A legacy is one of the heaviest burdens to bear. Jinbe carries two.)

So Jinbe is free, or at least freer than most, and his shackles are of his own design, and that’s enough. 

(Isn’t it?) 

(Luffy grins, and _no, it’s not_.)


	152. sabo + trees

“Are you out of your _mind_?” Koala hissed, looking frustrated and not a little panicked. “Be serious! We need to find a hiding place!”

“I _am_ serious!” Sabo said, keeping one ear on the sounds of the marines in the distance, drawing ever nearer. “Not like there’s anyplace else to hide. What, don’t you know how to climb a tree?” 

“That’s not the _issue_ here!” she whispered furiously, gesturing up at the branches high above their heads. “The issue is that _this_ is not a climbable tree!”

“What? It’s only like fifty feet.” Sabo frowned, tipped his head back and squinted up at the tree. “Maybe fifty-five. I could do that in less than a minute.” 

“…You’re _actually_ serious,” Koala said, looking a little appalled. 

Sabo blinked. “Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?” 

She gestured wordlessly for a moment. “ _People don’t climb trees that tall!_ ” 

“…Huh,” he said, looking up at the branches again. Perfectly reachable. The bark was rough and ridged enough to provide plenty of handholds. He honestly didn’t know what she was on about. “Well, I can.” 

“There’s not even any branches to climb on!” Koala said, “And even if you _could_ , _I_ sure can’t.” 

“It’s really not that hard-” Sabo started, but that made Koala get the look on her face like she was about to punch him, so he backpedalled. “…I could give you a piggyback ride?” 

She gave him a blankly disbelieving look. “No, you couldn’t.” 

He felt a little offended. “Could too!” 

“You’re saying you can climb a fifty foot tree, with me on your back, _without falling_ , before the marines get here.” 

“Yes!” Sabo said, throwing his hands up. “It’s not like it’s hard!”

Koala shifted on her feet for a moment, visibly torn, before there was a shout from the searching marines, much closer now, and her face hardened. “Okay. Fine. Why not. We’re going to die either way.” 

“Finally!” Sabo said, crouching down so she could scramble onto his back. 

“You better not drop me, I swear, Sabo-“ 

“I wouldn’t!” he complained. “I never did!” 

_-only ever dropped —_ once _, and he didn’t even get hurt or anything, of course he didn’t, but — never let him forget it-_

“Ready?” he asked, glancing back at her with a grin as she locked her arms around his shoulders.

“ _No._ ” 

“Great!” he said, and started climbing.

It was a little wobbly at first; he kept misjudging his own reach, for some reason, underestimating how long his arms were, but he caught himself pretty quick. After a moment or so, he found his rhythm, digging fingers and boot-toes into cracks and crevices in the bark, pulling them up along bumps and whorls. 

Ten, fifteen, twenty feet off the ground, and he didn’t really get what Koala had been making such a big deal about. This was _easy_ , even with her weight on his back and the sound of marine boots on the ground below. _There’s not even any branches to climb on_ , she’d said, but who needed _branches_? 

_-oi, race you to the top-_

He reached the branches in less than a minute, just as promised, and hoisted them onto the sturdiest-looking one, settling down with his feet dangling over the abyss. Moments later, the marines thundered in, right through the place they’d been standing. Sabo watched with no small degree of amusement until they moved on, giving up to go search someplace else.

“You can let go now, by the way,” he added, because Koala had yet to release her vice grip around his shoulders. 

She did, very slowly, easing herself off his back and onto the branch next to him, moving with extreme caution. He couldn’t blame her, he guessed; they _were_ pretty high up. 

“So,” Koala said, after taking a moment to catch her breath. “Where’d you learn how to do that?” 

He shrugged one shoulder. “Dunno.” It was rote response for him by now, really, and she knew him well enough to know full well there wasn’t any point in pushing.

“That’s not normal,” was all she said. 

He glanced over at her. “No?” 

“Nope.” 

“Huh,” Sabo said, propping his chin in a hand and looking down at the ground, far below. 

_-you guys are gonna be pirates? me too!-_


	153. kaku + horizon

Enies Lobby is burning at their backs, and up ahead there’s only darkness, and all they’ve got to guide them are the train tracks beneath their feet. One step and then another, and another, and another, because there’s nowhere else to go. 

There’s something funny, maybe, about the sea train’s tracks becoming their salvation, after they tried so hard to kill Water Seven’s heart and soul. Or maybe it’s not funny, maybe it’s cruel, but Kaku’s laughing anyways, rough and painful, because it’s not like there’s much else to laugh at.

He’s not sure how much blood he’s lost, but it’s definitely a lot, because his head is swimming, and his legs are wobblier than they’ve ever been, but he keeps walking. He’s not sure what they’re walking _towards_ , with everything they’ve ever lived for burning behind them, but there has to be _something_ , right?

There has to be something. 

He takes another step, and then another, and then he can’t feel his feet anymore and his vision goes hazy, and all of a sudden he’s falling. 

Someone catches him by the arm just before he can hit the water, hauls him back into a roughly standing position with a curse. “ _Seas_ ,” a rough voice snarls, and it takes him a few moments to parse it as Jabra’s. “Finally dying on us, you stupid cow?” 

“Fuck you,” Kaku mumbles, the words coming out a little swimmy, his eyes slipping half-shut despite his best efforts to fight them open. “I’m not a cow, ‘m a giraffe.” 

“I’ll drop you, asshole,” Jabra threatens, and there’s no heat to it at all. _All bark and no bite_ , Kaku thinks, and almost snickers, and that’s _definitely_ the blood loss talking. 

Jabra doesn’t drop him; Jabra grabs him by the shoulders, instead, and tells Kalifa to give him a hand, and by the time Kaku realizes what’s going on he’s draped over Jabra’s back, head lolling onto his shoulder. He can’t even muster up the energy to be offended about it. 

“You owe me, jackass,” Jabra grumbles as he shifts an arm to hold Kaku in place and starts walking again. Kaku just huffs a laugh into his shoulder; it makes his whole chest hurt, but it’s worth it anyways. 

Enies Lobby is still burning behind them and everything they’ve ever known is burning with it, and they’re still stumbling along through the night and the cold, the ocean lapping at their ankles and no destination in sight or mind. 

But up ahead, dawn is starting to bleed over the horizon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the cp9 cover story made me care so much about these asshole furries and i hate it


	154. shanks + bubbles

“See, so then the _alarms_ went off,” Shanks said, gesturing theatrically as he retold the story to the enraptured four-year-old toddling along in his footsteps. “And then-“ 

A patch of movement in the water below the boat caught his eye, and he blinked, cutting himself off mid-sentence and leaning over the railing for a better look. Bubbles, floating up to the ocean surface before popping, bright against the dark water, and he groaned. 

“Shit,” he said, and took a quick look around the deck. Not there. “ _Shit_ ,” he repeated, with considerably more feeling. 

Momonosuke was blinking up at him, big-eyed and lost. “Shanks?” 

“Hold this for a second,” Shanks said, already kicking off his shoes. He pulled his hat off his head and shoved it into Momonosuke’s hands before hoisting himself up and over the railing, sucking in a deep breath, and jumping. 

The shock of the cold water was as unpleasant as ever, but it was the sort of thing you got used to, once you’d thrown yourself into the ocean a few dozen times, and he barely paused before swimming deeper, squinting through the dark water for the shape he knew had to be there. The trailing bubbles floating up past his face helped, at first, but after a few seconds they started to peter out, and he gritted his teeth and swam faster. 

A few strokes later, a familiar silhouette slid into view out of the rapidly-darkening water all around, and Shanks would have sighed in relief if he could’ve spared the breath to do it. Instead he just reached down, locked a hand around Buggy’s limp wrist, and then began the long swim for the surface, dragging his best friend’s dead weight behind. 

Maybe someday when the two of them got their own ship, they could get their own cabin boys, too, and put _them_ on rescue duty. 

He broke the surface with a gasp, hauling Buggy up by the front of his shirt to get his head above water. A moment later a rope was thrown down, the heavy knot at the end hitting the surface with a splash. He grabbed on immediately, squinted up at the deck to see who’d thrown it, then grinned. 

“Thanks, Captain!” 

Roger just laughed, as at his side Gaban started hauling them back up. “You gave Momo a scare, you know!” he said, patting Momonosuke on the head as the boy peered anxiously down through the railing at the water, still hugging Shanks’ hat against his chest.

Shanks laughed. “Sorry, sorry! It was Buggy’s fault, though,” he called, readjusting his grip to make sure he didn’t drop Buggy right back into the water. “If you’re gonna yell at anybody, make it him.” 

Buggy was already coughing up water onto his shoulder and muttering insults under his breath, so Shanks already knew he was fine, anyways.

Just another day at sea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like the roger pirates a lot
> 
> also i like to think the story shanks is telling momo here is the same one alluded to in [crocus+memories](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25799371/chapters/63070969) about him and buggy kidnapping sengoku's goat


	155. kureha + above

“I hate this place,” Kureha announced barely a minute after stepping off the gondola onto the top of the Red Line, not bothering to keep her voice down in the slightest. She was a hundred and forty, she could express her opinions however loudly she wanted, damn it. 

Dalton, walking at her side, winced. “Doctor Kureha, please,” he said.

“Pff,” she huffed, waving his concern off. “Don’t tell me you like it, either. You feel it too, don’t you? It’s too high.” 

He glanced around them, lips pressed together in a tight, uncomfortable line. The air atop the Red Line was thin, the sky too wide and too cloudless. She could see the tension in his shoulders, the discomfort almost visible. “Well…” 

“Rulers shouldn’t live so high above their people,” Kureha said, letting all the distaste she felt show in her tone. “That’s how you get fools like Wapol, you know. Lived up that mountain his whole life, never had to worry about the people down below. It’s just the same.” 

“…I suppose,” Dalton said. 

She grinned, elbowed him. “That’s one of the reasons I’m glad you let me keep the castle, eh? Better the king should live with his people. Keeps him in touch.” 

“Right,” he said dryly. “It’s nothing to do with how much you like living there.” 

She shrugged, shameless. “Well, that might be part of it.” 

Besides, someone had to keep the flag flying. 

“I do agree,” Dalton said after another beat. “About this place, I mean. Something about it…” he trailed off, frowned. “I’ll be glad to be home, I think.” 

“Hmph,” Kureha said, and frowned up at Pangaea Castle as they approached. “You and me both.”


	156. momonosuke + hero

When Momonosuke thinks about heroes, he thinks of his parents. His father, loud and courageous, larger than life; his mother, calm and unbending, prophet of the dawn. They had been brave, both of them, braver than he’s ever been, willing to face fire and hell for the hope of a brighter future for family and country. 

And they’d died. 

This is what Momonosuke knows about heroes: they die. They die to fire and lead, unfair and unexpected, crucified before the watching eyes of the thousands they couldn’t quite save. 

Luffy isn’t a hero. He’s a pirate. 

Heroes are noble and good and they die, die, die; pirates are selfish and greedy and stubborn to the last, clinging to their dreams and treasures with broken nails and bloody teeth. Pirates don’t fight with honor.

Heroes couldn’t save Wano. 

Maybe pirates can.


	157. benn + free

“And _don’t_ come back!” Benn shouted after the attempted scavenger, dusting off his hands. The man picked himself up off the dusty ground, hissing curses under his breath, and hurried off into the darkness. 

Benn rolled his eyes and turned away from the dockyard gates, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket and sticking it between his teeth before feeling around for his lighter. The yard was dark, aside from the lantern on his hip, casting a swinging yellow glow as he walked. 

Playing night guard for docked boats wasn’t exactly a fun job, but it was a job. It let him vent his frustration on any idiots that thought they could get past him, and it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go, so he guessed he couldn’t really complain. 

Plus, he had a really nice view of the ocean. It spread out ahead of him, water dark and glittering with stars, dense with docked ships. 

At least it hadn’t been boring in recent weeks, what with all the people driven to the sea by the Pirate King’s dying words, hungry for treasure and glory and fame. Loguetown had become the center of a wave that would reach the whole world, soon enough. 

What a fucking mess. 

He found his lighter, lit his cigarette, and- 

“Hey, do you work here?” 

He almost choked on the inhale, glanced up. The speaker was perched on top of one of the nearby waterfront sheds, only a silhouette against the nighttime sky. He scowled, lifted his lantern to better see. 

It was a kid, wearing a straw hat that shone in the lantern-light atop a head of red hair, grinning down at him like Benn was the best thing he’d ever seen, like he wasn’t trespassing in a shipyard at an ungodly hour of the morning and starting up a casual conversation with the night guard. 

“What’re you doing here, kid?” Benn asked, frowning. 

“I’m here for a boat. Wanna help me steal one?” 

Benn snorted, raised an eyebrow. Well, he had to give him props for guts, if nothing else. Most of the attempted thieves usually at least _tried_ subtlety first. “No. Run home before I have to kick your ass.” 

Something heavy flickered across the kid’s face, just for a moment, before it was gone. “Can’t do that! So I guess either you gotta help me, or we gotta fight.” 

Benn sighed, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Look, kid. How old are you, like fifteen?” 

“Sixteen!” the kid objected.

“And what the hell do you want to go to sea for? The Pirate King’s treasure, I’m guessing?” he asked. “Don’t be an idiot. There’s probably not even anything there.” 

The kid frowned, looking offended. “That’s not it! I don’t care about th- the Pirate King’s treasure at all,” he said. “I don’t even want it.” 

Benn was intrigued, despite himself. “Then what _do_ you want?” 

And the grin was back. “I just wanna be free,” the kid said. “And be as happy as I can. There’s no place but the ocean for that.” 

_Free, huh?_

He glanced out at the ocean, the endless expanse of midnight-dark water stretching out to the horizon. He’d never left the Polestar Islands, before. He hadn’t thought he ever would; the only chance he’d ever had to make something more of himself was joining the marines, and he wasn’t _that_ desperate. 

But here was a chance, staring him in the face, a wide grin shadowed by an old straw hat. He took a long inhale on his cigarette, considered. 

“I’m Benn,” he said. “What’s your name, kid?” 

“Shanks!” the kid- Shanks- said brightly. “So are you gonna give me a hand?” 

He’d never be the sort to go to sea for glory or riches or fame, but-

- _free, and as happy as I can_ -

“Yeah,” Benn said. “Guess I am.” 


	158. yamato + ransom

Yamato laces fingers behind his head, stares up at the ceiling, long white-and-teal hair fanned out beneath him on the tatami. “Maria.” 

She plucks a string on her shamisen, considers the sound for a moment before twisting the tuning knob. “Young master?”

“Do you think my father would worry if I disappeared?” 

She hums. “Where would you disappear to?” she asks, and the shackles weigh so very heavy around his wrists, the cold iron an ever-present reminder. 

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Just… if I could.” 

“Hmmm.” She fiddles with the strings of her instrument for a minute, thoughtful, and the wavering notes hover in the air. “He would be upset. I don’t know that he would worry, but he would be upset.” 

“But why? He doesn’t- love me,” he says, and only chokes a little on the words. They taste like ash. They get easier to say every time he says them- easier, but never easy. 

“But he values you,” she points out. “As his only son, you have use to him. Were you captured, he would get you back, by ransom or by blood.” 

“And if I fled,” he says, and it comes out hopeless and tired, “he would follow.”

“Yes,” she says, and he can’t tell if there’s any sympathy in her voice.

“But he wouldn’t worry.”

“No,” she agrees. “I don’t think he would.”


	159. makino + sea

In the mornings, Makino goes to the sea. 

She goes early, just as dawn is bleeding over the horizon, staining the sky pink and red and orange. The tide is newly receded, leaving a wide, smooth band of unmarked sand behind, pocked here and there with shells. 

Luffy is bouncing along at her side, small hand in hers, dark eyes wide. The grin that breaks like sunrise over his face when they reach the beach puts a smile on her own as well, and when he pulls away to run to the surf, she lets him go easily. 

(She’s only eighteen. She hasn’t learned yet how easily sons can be lost at sea.)

She pulls her sandals off and walks along the water’s edge barefoot, following the small footsteps he leaves in the damp sand as he runs ahead, giddy with excitement. The waves wash in and out, trailing shell fragments and seafoam in their wake. Luffy follows them as far as he dares when they recede, only to run laughing back to shore when the next wave crashes in.

She keeps a careful eye on him, just in case he ventures too far- he still can’t swim, despite efforts by what feels like half the town to teach him- but it seems like today he’s more preoccupied with searching for flotsam treasures than with chasing waves, so she lets herself relax. The morning air is fresh and cool, not yet warmed by the rising sun.

Here’s something that Makino knows: someday, Luffy is going to go to sea. 

He’s only five, but she knows him, his boundless energy and the bright-eyed fascination on his face whenever he hears a new story. She knows he’s not the sort of person to ever be happy settled down in one place, not anywhere, and especially not on a quiet little island like Dawn. 

Most of all, though, she sees the way that he looks to the ocean, and knows she’d never be able to keep him here. Knows she’d never want to. 

(But sometimes she thinks things will be awfully quiet, once he’s gone.)

For now, though- 

“Makino! Makino, come an’ look what I found!” 

The sun is rising, warm light glittering on the waves like orange glass, and she smiles, and goes to look. Luffy’s got something cradled in his hands, round and white, and when she reaches him he bounces up on his toes to show it to her. 

“Oh!” she says. “A sand dollar!” 

“Sand dollar?” he echoes, giving the shell a fascinated look.

“Mhm,” she says, and smiles. “Normally they get shattered by the waves. It’s very lucky to find one unbroken like this.”

“Oh!” he says, and presses it into her hands. “Then here!” 

She blinks, fingers curling instinctively around the delicate shell. It’s still damp from the surf, the surface grainy. “For me?” 

“Yeah!” he says, and grins, big and honest. And then he’s gone, already back to chasing the surf and laughing in the morning air, and she’s left standing there, staring down at the sand dollar in her hands, perfect and unbroken, the only one she’s ever seen. 

This is how Luffy is: he’s there, and he gives you something wonderful, and then he’s gone. 

She tucks the sand dollar in the chest pocket of her apron, right beside her heart, and watches the sun rise.


	160. sanji + have heart

Sanji is weak.

He’s okay with that, most days.  
He’s not his brothers, hard and cruel as steel; he’s not his sister, open wounds buried under porcelain smiles. He wanted to be, once. He didn’t know there was anything else he could be, once. 

But-

Meat and vegetables sizzle on the stove, filling the whole kitchen with the warm smell of cooking. The galley is still more than a little battered and burned, mostly repaired but still bearing scorch-scars and scuffs that weren’t there before, but it’s okay. It’s okay, and so is he. 

A few scuffs and scars are nothing, when his captain pulled him open and saw all the most ruined parts of him and brought him home again anyways.  
Through the open door, he hears Brook crack a joke and Luffy laugh in response, bright and delighted, and Chopper giggles and Nami snorts and mutters something exasperated under her breath, and his heart hurts, so painfully tender he can barely breathe around it. 

He’s so glad he didn’t lose this. 

And if that makes him weak, he’s fine with that, he thinks.

Sanji’s heart might be bleeding, stitched to his sleeve injured and raw for the whole world to see, but at least he’s got one at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _bleeding heart (informal/derogatory): a person considered to be dangerously softhearted_


	161. buggy + done

It’s over. 

The sky cracks open with thunder as the Captain’s body slumps to the boards of the execution stand, all at once empty and lifeless, and the rain comes down. In seconds, it’s a downpour, and the crowd starts to disperse, the gawkers driven away to shelter now that the show is done. There’s a story to spread, after all, a legend already beginning to grow, and no time to waste. 

Buggy doesn’t move. 

The rain comes down cold and heavy, soaking through his shirt to his skin. One of the executioners plants a foot on the Captain’s back and shoves his body off the platform before turning to go. It hits to the cobbles below with a sickening _thump_ , thick and lifeless. 

Someone yells something, kicks the body, and he twitches, balls his fists at his sides. 

Fingers around his wrist, cold from the rain, and he startles a little, yanks his hand away. It’s Shanks, he processes a moment later- Shanks, biting his lip hard enough it looks like it might bleed, eyes dark and miserable and fixed on the Captain’s body. 

“Come on,” Shanks says, and reaches for his wrist again. “Come on. We should- we should go.” 

Buggy glares at him, something like bile rising up in his chest, and tugs his hand away again. “No!” he snaps. “We can’t just-“ 

The words stick, lodge in his throat. _We can’t just leave. We can’t just_ leave _-_

There’s another quiet, ugly little thud, another boot driven into the Captain’s ribs, and Shanks twitches, his shoulders tightening, but he doesn’t look angry, he just looks miserable and lost and tired, and Buggy doesn’t- he _can’t-_

“He’s gone,” Shanks says. “Come on, there’s nothing- come on.” 

“ _Leave me alone_!” Buggy snaps, and storms away from the only family he’s got left, as trickles of the Captain’s blood pool into the rainwater beneath their feet, as above them the sky opens up. 

(This day will be legend someday, but to Buggy it’s only this: rain, and blood, and ugly laughter over the Pirate King’s corpse.)

Shanks doesn’t call after him. 


	162. rouge + rising sun

A certainty: Portgas D. Rouge is about to die. 

Another: Outside, the sun is rising. 

Her body is failing around her. She can feel it, her heartbeat stuttering and vision beginning to blur around the edges, the relief of her son’s warmth in her arms finally washing away the resolve that was the last thing holding her together. 

“Help me up,” she says, holding out an expectant hand, and she can’t manage more than a whisper, but there’s still the steel of ages in her voice, and Garp barely protests at all. 

She has to lean so heavy against his side that he’s nearly carrying her, and perhaps it would’ve been easier if she’d let him, but she still has her dignity, and she’d rather stumble weak and weary to her death on her own two feet. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, gentle for all his bulk, and guides her outside. 

Rouge is dying, but she’s going to die as she lived.

The cliff overlooks the ocean, sweeping endless blue below. Garp lowers her down to sit in the soft grass as her legs give out under her, and she savors the tickle of it on her feet. Her strength is draining, almost gone; she can taste blood in the back of her mouth. She couldn’t stand again if she wanted to, she thinks. 

The morning sky is clear as the sun crests the horizon, and her son is warm in her arms, and Rouge couldn’t ask for a better death. 

No other death for a pirate, but with the wind in her hair and the sea in her sight. 

“Look, Ace,” she murmurs, shifting him in her arms. Her voice rasps in her throat, dry as paper, and there’s blood on her dry and cracking lips, and she smiles. “It’s sunrise.” 

The sky is bleeding orange and pink, the sun’s reflection dancing on the waves. It’s the loveliest sunrise she’s ever seen, even through the darkening of her vision, and she’s seen more than her share. It’s going to be a beautiful day. 

She dies as she lived: smiling, eyes on the horizon, beneath the light of the rising sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is one of my all-time favorite ficlets, to be honest


	163. sunny + faith

Between when the Thousand Sunny arrives at Zou and when she leaves, something happens. 

She doesn’t know what, exactly. She can’t bear witness from where she‘s moored, miles below the city on the elephant’s back. But when her crew comes home, still split by half, the navigator’s face is grimmer and the doctor is just a little more anxious and the musician just a little less cheerful, and the cook- 

The cook’s not there. 

There’s an empty space, a gaping wound in the galley, an absence that bothers like a missing tooth. It’s not like emptiness of the two years, long and dragging as they were; not like the splitting of the crew at Dressrosa. Those were temporary, the eventual homecoming assured.

This is different. Someone is not here who should be, and nobody seems to know if or when he’ll be back. 

Nobody but the captain, that is. He’s nothing but certain, as he ever is, perched on the figurehead with eyes on the horizon, looking ever forward and never back.

 _Have faith_ , Merry whispers in her ear, and smiles. _I’ve seen this before._

_He always brings them home._


	164. chopper + nutrition

Chopper rapped a hoof against the galley doorframe, and waited until Sanji looked up from the stove to wave a little. 

“Hi, Sanji,” he said, shifting a little uncomfortably. He’d only been aboard the Going Merry for less than a week, and everything still felt just a little too foreign, a little too unfamiliar. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his new crew, he _did_ , but- he didn’t _know_ them, not really, not yet. “Um, are you busy?” 

“Not really,” Sanji said with a glance at the stove. He shifted a pot off the burner, turned the heat down, and wiped his hands before turning around fully. “What is it?” 

“Um, well, I just wanted to talk to you about, um, dietary needs?” Chopper said, stepping rest of the way into the galley. “I finally finished preliminary checkups- it was _really_ hard getting Luffy to stay in one place long enough for a proper assessment, by the way-” 

Sanji raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, how’d you manage that?”

“Oh, I had Zoro sit on him,” Chopper said, and Sanji barked out a surprised laugh. “But, um, I just wanted to ask you, are you aware his basal metabolic rate is- _really_ high? Like maybe dangerously?” 

Sanji hesitated. “I’m not… sure what that means?” he admitted.

“Oh! That’s fine, I can explain- it’s, um, the rate at which your body uses energy, I guess, when you’re at rest. The problem, or, I guess not problem, but something to- be aware of, is that Luffy isn’t ever really- at rest? He’s moving all the time, and he uses energy when he stretches, too, I think- did you know he was only seven or so when he ate his devil fruit?”

“I didn’t,” Sanji said, leaning against a cupboard with a frown. “I don’t know a lot about his history. Never asked.” 

“He didn’t say much when I asked him, either,” Chopper said with a shake of his head. “But, the point is he’s always moving, way more than a normal person, and he doesn’t even really think about it. Metabolic rate for an average person is about sixteen hundred calories a day? And, um, I’d guess Luffy’s is at _least_ two or three times what it should be, for his size.”

“Okay,” Sanji said, nodding along. “What do you need me to do, then?” 

“Calories!” Chopper answered immediately. “Just- make sure he’s getting lots of energy-dense foods? I already know he gets a lot of protein, but- fats and especially carbohydrates too, that’s the energy that mostly gets burned during physical activity. Can you do that?” 

“Of course I can,” Sanji said, sounding almost offended that he had to ask. 

“Good! Good,” Chopper said, relieved. “Um, thank you.” 

Sanji waved a hand, turning back to the stove to move pots back onto burners and fiddle with some dials. “No, thanks for telling me. Of course that moron wouldn’t know how to look after himself if you tattooed it on his forehead.”

“Oh! Of course. I mean, I’m the doctor. It’s my job, right?” Chopper said, rubbing the back of his head with a hoof and smiling down at the floorboards. He started towards the galley door, then blinked and glanced back. “Um, also, can you make sure Zoro is getting extra iron and vitamin B12? He’s, um, at risk for anemia.” 

Sanji choked on his cigarette inhale and laughed for a minute or so before composing himself enough to roll his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I can do that too. But you should tell him maybe if he tried a little harder to keep his blood _inside_ his body-“ 

“Oh, I did!” Chopper said. “Five times. I just don’t think he’s going to listen, which is why I’m telling you.” 

Sanji snorted, grinning down at him, plainly amused. “You’re a pretty good kid, you know?” 

Chopper blinked a few times, feeling warm inside and out, before he remembered to not be even a little flattered at _all_. 

“Sh-shut up!”


	165. sabo + crown

When Sabo was four, he met the King of Goa. 

It was a brief, formal introduction, his mother’s fingernails scratching warningly against his scalp, his best clothes so starched they felt like cardboard. He doesn’t remember what was said. He doesn’t remember a lot, really, from that time before he ran away. Even now, with his memory mostly restored, things are still missing. Lost and blurred conversations and faces, details he’ll probably never get back.

(He doesn’t mind, really. He remembers the faces that matter.)

What he remembers is this: the king’s robes, silk and velvet; his smile, lifeless and bored; his crown, heavy and priceless and gold, gold, gold. It had glittered under the chandelier lighting, set with yellow stones, the brightest thing in the opulence of the ballroom. 

The crown spinning around his gloved finger in lazy loops isn’t quite the same- its working is more delicate, less blocky, studded with rubies instead of topaz- but the ostentation, the weight of all that useless wasted wealth, is near identical. 

“I think we’re clear,” Hack says, squinting into the dark ocean behind them, before turning around and sighing. “Did you really need to take that?” 

“Nope,” Sabo says, tossing the crown up in the air and catching it. “But it’s not like the king’s using it anymore, right?”

There’s a spot of dried blood splattered against the crown’s golden rim, red as the rubies set into the metal. He considers rubbing it off, then decides against it. 

“Besides, new countries are fragile. Once the insurgents form their republic, better it’s not anywhere where any loyalists can find it.”

“You know,” Koala says, “you could’ve _told_ me you had an actual reason for taking it _before_ you ran back past the enraged royal guard to grab it.” 

“I could’ve,” Sabo allows, and grins at her. 

She rolls her eyes and elbows him. “What’re you going to do with it now, though?” she asks. 

He considers. “Present for Dragon-san?” 

“I don’t think he shares your sense of humor,” Hack says dryly. 

“And thank the _seas_ for that,” Koala says. 

Sabo snorts. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he says, bouncing the crown in his hand, watching moonlight play on the gilded surface. 

He closes his fist around the rim, draws back, and throws the crown into the ocean. It hits the dark water with a quiet splash, and within seconds it’s vanished from sight completely. 

“Never liked those stupid things anyways.” 


	166. coby + comet

Everything is so _loud_. 

Everything is so bright so loud so painful so _much_ , and no matter how hard Coby squeezes his eyes shut and flattens his hands over his ears, he can’t lock it out, can’t make it _stop_. 

It feels like something’s cracked his skull open and poured it full of noise and light and pain, and he can’t get it _out again_ -

When he was fourteen and hopeless and so very far from home, scrubbing stains off the deck of Alvida’s ship in the dead of night until his hands were numb and bleeding, he used to look up at the stars. It had been reassuring, in a way; the stars, distant and cold and ever-bright and harmless, always staring down at him no matter where he was. 

The world is dark behind his eyelids, now, and the stars are all around him, burning far too bright and close to look at, radiating pain and fear and hate, and he can’t look away, no matter how he tries.

Stars all around him, too close too bright too _much_ , and one by one by one they’re _dying_ , flaring out like meteors, like comets, burning brilliant one instant and then dead and gone the next, soundtracked by a swelling cacophony of screams and sobs and pleading. 

Someone’s hands on his shoulders, someone’s voice, worried and frantic, but he can’t _hear_ anything over the screaming and the sobbing and the hideous resounding _silence_ -

Stars burning out, one by one by one, and as bad as all the noise and the pain is, the hollow emptiness left behind when they go out is a thousand thousand times worse. 

He has to stop this.


	167. law + poetry

“It’s not much of a library,” Law warns, holding the door open. “Not many readers on this crew, so the books are all mine.”

“Nonetheless, I appreciate it,” Nico Robin says, ducking into his quarters with a smile. “I brought a few of my favorites over from the Sunny, but I think it’s always good to expand one’s horizons. Rereading can be pleasant, of course, but it’s usually not terribly educational.” 

He shrugs and leans against the wall, watches as she makes her way over to his bookshelf to examine the spines. It’s somewhat of a mess, given he mostly grabs books off of it when he can’t sleep and just needs something to stare at until his vision goes blurry, shoving them back haphazardly wherever they’ll fit the next morning, but if she notices, she doesn’t mention it. 

“It’s a shame Chopper isn’t here,” she comments. “I’m sure he’d find some of these fascinating. Would you mind if I showed him your collection once we meet up with him and the others at Wano?” 

Law snorts. “Sure, if you think we’ll have even a _second_ of peace once Strawhat arrives.” 

She chuckles, turning back to the bookshelf. “Ah, I’m sure we can find the time. After the battle, if not before.”

The absolute faith the Strawhat Pirates have in their captain, even against the highest of odds, is something Law isn’t sure he’ll ever understand. 

“I notice these are mostly textbooks,” she says after another moment, pulling a book off the shelf and turning it over to read the back cover. “No taste for fiction, Torao-kun? Or poetry?” 

Law raises an eyebrow, pointedly doesn’t think about the box of comic books stashed safely under his bed. “Do I _look_ like the sort of person who reads poetry to you?” 

“Oh, looks can be deceiving,” she says, glancing up at him with a smile. “Zoro is rather fond of haiku, did you know?” 

“I didn’t,” he has to admit. 

“How about this,” she says, and a hand blossoms from the bag on her shoulder, undoing the clasp and pulling a thin, well-worn volume out. “In exchange for you kindly allowing me access to your collection, I’d be delighted to lend you a favorite book of mine in return.” 

She passes the book into one of her real hands and holds it out, and he takes it before he can really think not to. There’s no title on the cover, but flipping through the pages, he sees snippets of text in blocks and lines, sometimes neatly arranged and sometimes dropped wildly and randomly around the page. Poetry.

He looks back up at her, and the skepticism must show on his face, because she laughs. 

“If you don’t like it, that’s perfectly alright,” she says. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d give it a try.” 

…Well. It’s not like he has much to do, while they’re underway. It couldn’t hurt. And much as it really, genuinely pains him to admit it, the Strawhats haven’t steered him wrong yet.

“Fine.” 


	168. yamato + legacy

Yamato is not _small_. 

He’s taller than many of his father’s men, and most of Orochi’s as well. He’s no child, no weakling, not anymore, and he _knows_ that. He does. He _does_. 

But- 

Yamato is tall, but Kaidou _towers_. 

Kaidou stands so tall he blocks the sun, and Yamato, trapped at his feet, trapped in his shadow, has never even been able to catch a glimpse of sunlight past his shoulders. Some days- most days- the weight of that shadow is so heavy around his wrists, around his throat, that he can’t _breathe_. 

( _The dawn is coming_ , Oden writes, _the dawn of the world, glory of glories,_ and Yamato wants to see it so badly it _hurts_. He wants to stare into that light until it blinds him.) 

When his father stands over him, he can never feel anything but _small_ : eight years old and watching uncomprehending as heavy manacles click shut around his wrists, twelve years old and limping for a month because his father threw him like a ragdoll through a wall, sixteen years old and unable to think through the ringing in his head after the latest irritated blow. 

He hates his father, but even more than that, he hates that _feeling_ \- the smallness, the weakness, the _fear_. 

(Oden writes like he’s never tasted fear in his life, like a man who lived his whole life in the sun, unburdened by any sort of chain, and Yamato reads with shackles around his wrists and terror heavy in his veins and legacy bearing ever down against his shoulders, and _wants_.) 


	169. toki + unfolding

Hiyori makes a small, frustrated noise from where she’s sitting, frowning down at something in her lap, and Toki glances up. 

“Hiyori?” She stands, crosses the room to kneel down at her daughter’s side. “What is it?” 

“I messed it up,” Hiyori mumbles, sounding near tears. Toki can see a wad of folded paper cradled in her hands, a little crumpled from clumsy handling. “And I don’t know what I did and it keeps getting _worse_ -” 

“Well, I’m sure we can fix it,” Toki says with a smile, settling into a more comfortable position and resting a reassuring hand on Hiyori’s shoulder. “What were you trying to make?” 

“A crane.” Hiyori frowns down at the paper. “Otsuru showed me how, last time we visited, and she told me if you make enough of them, you get a wish. I thought I remembered how she did it, but…” 

She trails off, biting her lip. 

“Oh, that’s no problem worth crying about,” Toki says with a smile. “Do you want to know the first step to fixing problems like this?” 

Hiyori blinks up at her, blue eyes big and watery. 

Toki smiles, taps her daughter on the nose. “You only have to unfold it,” she says, “and start again.” 

Hiyori frowns. “But what if I can’t get back to where I was?” 

“Ah, but you can always get back to where you were,” Toki says. “It might take a few tries, but I’ll help you. Sometimes when you’re stuck, all you can do is start over. There’s no shame in it.” 

Hiyori frowns, but nods, leaning over the crumpled paper again and starting to carefully undo the messy creases, prying them apart with her thumbnails, smoothing the scrap of paper out fold by fold. Toki watches, her whole chest soft with fondness, and remembers.

She’s started over again, and again, and again, left people and islands and whole lives behind. And if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t _be_ here, sitting on the tatami at her daughter’s side, sunlight and cherry petals drifting in through open windows. This, now, is worth every undone moment, every life she didn’t live. 

(The world burns down around her, the air full of smoke and the sky full of ash, nowhere left to turn and nowhere left to run, and-

Sometimes, all you can do is start over.) 


	170. garp + wish

Ace and Luffy are sleeping, now, exhausted and bruised, piled up on top of each other in a messy heap of blankets and limbs. Garp props his chin in his hand and just looks at them for a moment, really looks, not at the men he hopes they’ll be but the boys they are. 

“You’re rough on them,” Dadan says, not accusing, but gruff as she always is. She knocks back a gulp of sake to punctuate the statement, and sighs. 

“So are you,” he points out. 

She snorts. “Bah. They can take it. They barely even _listen_ to me, just do whatever the _hell_ they want, I swear to the _seas_ -“ 

She descends into frustrated grumbling, and Garp chuckles.

Eventually, though, the laughter fades, and he sobers again. Across the room, he can see one of Luffy’s hands balled up in Ace’s shirt, holding on tight. “The world won’t be easy on them.” 

“Sure as hell hasn’t been so far,” Dadan says, quieter than usual.

(He’ll never stop wondering, if he’d happened to come to visit ahead of the Celestial Dragon’s pilgramage, instead of arriving in its wake to find the wreckage left behind-)

“Yeah,” Garp says, and thinks of rope burns and bandages and eyes red and swollen from crying. “Wish it was different.” 

“Well, it ain’t,” Dadan says.

Garp sighs. “Yeah, I know,” he says, and holds out a hand for the bottle. She wordlessly passes it over. Across the room, Luffy rolls over to curl against Ace’s chest, and Ace tightens an arm around his shoulders. 

(He wishes it could be easy, for them.) 


	171. kiku + strength

Her muscles _burn_ with the strain, the push and pull of the repetition, the ache creeping into her shoulders and across her back. 

Horizontal cut, diagonal cut. Feint, slash, spin. Parry. 

Repeat.

The afternoon sun beats down on the small training ground, tucked away behind Oden-jō. The dirt beneath her sandals is baked dry, packed flat by generations of feet. Her hair, tied up to keep it out of her eyes, sticks in the sweat on the back of her neck. She can taste dust on her tongue. 

She closes her eyes, hears her heartbeat, her breathing, calm and steady against the ache working its way down to her bones. The blade whistles, ever so faintly, as it slices through the sun-warmed air, a sound that’s not quite music. 

“Your form’s improved,” a voice says from behind her, and Kiku blinks, startled out of her reverie, and turns.

“Kin-san!” she says, smiling, lowering her katana to her side.

“You’ve been out here a lot, lately,” he says. “Every day, or near enough, ever since…“ 

_Ever since he left,_ he doesn’t have to say. _Ever since our duty fled across the waves and we were left behind, with nothing to do but wait, and keep the peace, and watch the horizon for his return_. 

“Yes,” she says, quietly. “I want…” 

She hesitates, bites her lip, then says, “Izou is out there, on the ocean. I’m sure he’s getting stronger, and fighting stronger enemies, and learning new things. I want to get stronger, too. For when they come home.” 

A heartbeat’s pause while a question hovers on the tip of her tongue, then: “They _are_ coming home, right?” 

“Of course,” he says, immediate and sure, then smiles, a little rueful. “Lord Oden has always been- willful, you know, but he’s always cared for this country, even if he doesn’t show it. He’ll see the world, and do everything he wants to do, and when he’s done- he’ll come back. I have no doubt about it.” 

“Really?”

“Really,” he says with a nod, then glances up at the sky, at the fat orange sun slowly crawling down towards the horizon. “How long have you been out here?” 

She rubs the back of her neck, flushing a little. “Since morning.” 

“Ahh… well, I think that’s enough training for today,” he says. “Why don’t you come have dinner with Tsuru and I?” 

Her arms are aching, and the sword is heavy in her hands, a relentless reminder of how small she still is, how soft, how weak. She has so far to go, still. There’s so much left to do. 

But, for right now-

“Alright,” she says, and sheathes her katana, and follows him home. 


	172. conis + sing

Conis never noticed the quiet until it was gone. 

It had been a cold, insidious sort of quiet that swallowed the island for the seven years Enel held dominion over it. It was the hush of voices that never dared speak too loud, the anxious softness of music that never dared to ring imperfect. 

It was creeping and suffocating and _awful_ , but it was also subtle, the sort of thing that could only be noticed when contrasted against a better, brighter world, and that was the sort of world Conis didn’t know. So she never noticed the quiet until the bell rang and the sky broke open and Skypiea was finally _free_. 

She’s learning, now, how good it feels to be _loud_ , how freeing it is, to cry and laugh and sing without fear. It’s an exhale, after holding her breath for years and years and years. 

Above, the bell sings, and sings, and sings. 


	173. momonosuke + spirit

He might be cursed, he thinks. 

It’s the only explanation Momonosuke can think of. 

The dump underneath Punk Hazard’s labs is dim and gloomy, everything half-swallowed by shadows, but there’s still light enough to see by, if only barely, and plenty polished pieces of metal to act as mirrors. And even if there weren’t, his neck twists in ways it shouldn’t, now. 

Either way, he can’t escape looking at himself. 

He knows perfectly well what’s happened, what he’s become, even if he still can’t grasp how or why- even if he wishes he couldn’t see at all.

There are claws on the tips of fingers that aren’t really fingers anymore so much as talons, skin scabbed over with smoothly overlapping pink and yellow scales, mouth wide and teeth flat and a warmth like a hot coal burning somewhere in the hollow of his chest. His body’s all _wrong_. 

Except… it’s not. Because- it still _feels_ like _his_ body, he can move it just fine without needing to think about it, like everything is right where it’s supposed to be and his skin is as home as it’s always been, and that’s _worse_ , maybe, because-

He’s _not_ a dragon. He’s not he’s not he’s _not_.

But he really does look like one, and he _feels_ like one, too, a feeling that only increases every time he slithers over a trash heap or curls up into a ball with his tail across his face for warmth or catches a glimpse of his own yellow-eyed reflection, and that’s what scares him more than anything. 

He’s a dragon but he c _an’t_ be- because he’s a person, because _Kaidou’_ s a dragon and he’s _nothing like Kaidou_ \- but he _is_ , and no matter how he tries to close his eyes to hide from it, he always has to open them again to gloom and cold and his own blurry reflection cast against the piles of discarded stainless steel. 

His body’s all twisted and so is his head, and all he’s left with is his spirit, that little fire of certainty buried in his chest, the one that insists- _I’m a person I’m a person I’m a person._

He clings to it, and closes his eyes, and prays. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey do you ever think how fucked up it is that momo got turned into a dragon against his will and spent an indeterminate amount of time completely alone and with no idea what the fuck had happened or how to turn back 
> 
> because i do!! that shit haunts me!!


	174. rayleigh + miracle

“Ray-san?” Shakky props her chin on her hand, gives him one of those clever-curious looks she’s so good at. “What’re you thinking about?” 

“Hm? Oh.” He doesn’t look up from the newspaper, from Luffy’s grin beaming up at him from the front page beneath a headline about his latest and greatest audacity. “About men who make miracles, I suppose.” 

“Miracles?” she asks, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “You know, I never would have placed you for a believer in the impossible.” 

“Ahhh… you and I both know that if you live long enough and travel far enough, you learn nothing is really impossible,” he says with a brief smile. “And there’re some people who just seem to attract wondrous things like magnets. I’ve been lucky, I think. I’ve gotten to know two.” 

She’s quiet for a moment while flicks a matchstick against the bar countertop, lights the cigarette between her lips. “You know, I never did get to know Roger that well,” she says. “We never quite got along. I think I like Monkey-chan better.” 

He chuckles, leans back in his chair. “They are very similar in some ways,” he agrees, “and very different in others. But if there’s one thing that’s just the same, it’s a penchant for turning the world on its head.” 

He picks up the newspaper again, glances down at the headline- _DONQUIXOTE DOFLAMINGO FELLED BY STRAWHAT-HEART PIRATE ALLIANCE!_

Just as well, really. He doesn’t know that this world could handle a second Gol D. Roger. 

But Monkey D. Luffy might be just what it needed.


	175. sanji + waves

It’s common, Sanji knows, for men who’ve lived their lives mostly on land to feel ill when they step aboard a ship, sometimes only briefly, sometimes lingering for the whole voyage. Something about the ever-present movement of the waves, the way everything rocked and shifted to the winds and the tides.

He’s never been able to understand it, personally. It’s land that makes him nauseous- but then, maybe that makes sense. He’s only ever been home at sea. 

The longest stretch of time he spent on land, he spent starving, staring at the sun and wasting away slow. And Germa’s vessels, while not land in the truest sense, had always been far too heavy and solid to ever be budged by the waves. They only ever moved exactly where and when Judge commanded it. 

His first weeks and months and years aboard the Baratie, whenever he startled awake with nightmares, heart beating too fast in his chest, Judge’s voice and Reiju’s laughter echoing in his ears- whenever that happened, he could close his eyes and feel the rocking of the waves beneath him, steady and gentle and safe, and know with certainty he was home. 

The first night after fleeing Tottoland, he wakes up gasping, startling so badly he nearly tumbles to the floor, and the first thing he does is feel for his wrists, his hands, that they’re there and safe and intact. 

They are. Of course they are, and as soon as he knows that, he can breathe again, still a little ragged and uneven from the remnants of the horror still running through his veins. 

The room is quiet, and as his heartbeat calms, he can hear his crewmates sleeping around him; Luffy snoring, Chopper mumbling to himself. He stretches out his observation haki for just long enough to check on Brook, silent in the corner, and Nami and Carrot in the next room before letting it fall, dropping his head into his hands for a moment as the tension drains away. 

They’re okay. They’re okay, and so is he. 

And the boat is rocking to the rhythm of the waves, steady and gentle and safe.


End file.
